Echoes across the century

While other girls may have been collecting souvenirs and photos of the latest heartthrobs, artist curator and set designer Jane Churchill was focusing her imagination on two lovers who lived 100 years ago. Since a very young age, Jane has been fascinated and inspired by the touching story of her great great-uncle, second lieutenant William Goss Hicks, and his fiancée, Jesse, who were never to marry because he fell on the Western Front in July 1917. Jane was not just collecting stickers and badges but rescuing old photographs, army buttons, ration tins, etc, from the period. She was therefore the ideal person to curate an exhibition at the Guildhall Art Gallery in the city of london, as it was looking for a way of showing the contribution the 12 livery companies in the city made to the war effort.

The exhibition is really a projection of what might have happened to William and Jesse had they shared a long marriage – Jesse did get married but Jane has little knowledge of her later life.

Jane has also guided pupils of all ages, from 14 London schools, to give their response, through collage and paintings of the terrible conflict. In the first room, Jane has amassed objects of memory, such as tear catchers, some from her family – she won’t tell me what was inherited or what she found. She has also made dream boxes, within which are paper cutouts imagining the later lives that Jesse and Arthur had together. Butterflies and moths – both real and painted by the children – in glass cases is a theme that runs throughout the exhibition and represents ‘a symbol of ephemeral powderiness’, says Jane.

The results are very effective and moving, particularly the sensitive and pragmatic approach the children show in creating their art works. Many have not learned about the First World War at school and are not influenced by today’s anti-war sentiment surrounding it. Their posters read ‘enlist today, regret tomorrow’ but also ‘Make Your Family Proud’.

Also, the children must have had fun and a bit of a shock when, at nearby Apothecaries’ Hall, they saw the concoctions and ate the food supplied in the trenches to British forces by the Worshipful company of cooks.

Until 16 July, free entry, Guildhall Art Gallery, Guildhall Yard, London EC2V: 020-7332 3700, www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/guildhallartgallery