By kind permission of Electric Egg
A Mighty Blow for Freedom – Fuck the Media (1988)
A patinated bronze sculpture (one of an edition of three) located in the Temple Gardens, Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
The sculpture is a powerful, helmeted figure with a cudgel, which is used to smash a television screen; ‘This work voices criticisms of what Sandle describes as ‘the heroic decadence’ of capitalism, in particular its appetite for global conflict. He has also attacked the media for packaging and sanitising the destructiveness of war’.
Loaned from The Usher Gallery, the sculpture toured Scotland highlands and islands as part of The Highland Festival by Trevor Avery and Nigel Mullan, 1997.
This work was only the second outdoor sculpture to be purchased by The National Collections Fund, later known as The Art Fund. The first was The Burghers of Calais by Auguste Rodin, cast in 1908 and which is located in the Victoria Tower Gardens, beside the Houses of Parliament, London. www.royalacademy.org.uk/academicians/sculptors/michael-sandle-ra,118,AR.html
About the Artist
Michael Sandle (1936 –)
Born in Dorset, Michael Sandle studied at Douglas School of Art and Technology, Isle of Man (1951 – 54), then at The Slade (1956 – 59).
In his early work he emphasised craftsmanship and the search for symbols, rejecting the abstract formalism increasingly common in sculpture of the period. Throughout the 1960s and ’70s he worked on a small range of individual works in which he explored abstract and figurative idioms.
During the 1980s his work became increasingly monumental, exploring themes of war, destruction, inhumanity and media manipulation.
Michael Sandle is a Senior research fellow of De Montfort University, Lincoln and was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Sculptors in 1994 and to the Royal Academy in 2004. www.sculpture.org.uk/biography/MichaelSandle
By kind permission of Electric Egg
By kind permission of Electric Egg
