Manchester International Festival has together with the Imperial War Museum co-commissioned Official War Artist Steve McQueen to create a response to the second Iraq War. ‘For Queen and Country’ will be exhibited in the Great Hall, Central Library, Manchester, from 28 February – 15 July 2007. The project consists of a set of postage stamps featuring a photographic portrait of the individual men and women who have lost their lives in Iraq.

Manchester International Festival Press Release

Manchester International Festival has together with the Imperial War Museum co-commissioned Official War Artist Steve McQueen to create a response to the second Iraq War as one of the Pre-Festival Commissions prior to the inaugural festival which opens on the 28th June this year. This new work will open to the public on 28 February 2007.

Over the last three years McQueen has been working on an idea that considers national loss, intimate reflection and the ultimate sacrifice. His conclusion has been to create a fitting memorial to those individual servicemen and women whose lives have been lost in defence of their country. McQueen felt this symbolic gesture should circulate in the public domain and be as far reaching as possible, that it should enter peoples’ homes, their offices and their everyday lives.

With this in mind, he initiated a project to produce a set of postage stamps featuring a photographic portrait of the individual men and women who have lost their lives in Iraq. Each stamp will bear the unaltered photographic portraits that will be displayed in an exhibition cabinet, in a simple, formal manner, with all due reverence.

The resulting work is very much a collaboration with the families of the deceased, to whom the artist acknowledges a huge debt of gratitude. McQueen and the Festival have contacted all the dead soldiers’ next of kin, to seek permission and almost 100 were willing for their lost child, spouse or partner to be represented. The stamps presented are not real stamps, but a modest evocation of what could be a truly national tribute.

McQueen was commissioned in 2003 by the Imperial War Museum to respond to the conflict in Iraq. Having travelled to Basra and subsequently confronted many obstacles and difficulties during the three years since his return, the one thing which stayed with McQueen was the camaraderie and commitment of the young British troops that were stationed there. Manchester International Festival joined IWM as co-commissioners in order to provide McQueen with the necessary creative support in developing and realising his ideas.

The work will be exhibited in the Great Hall, Central Library, Manchester, from 28 February – 15 July 2007.

“One of my ambitions for the Manchester International Festival was to invite major artists to respond to urgent issues of our time. It’s significant that an artist of Steve McQueen’s stature has agreed to work with our Festival and IWM to create such an important memorial” - comments Festival Director Alex Poots.

Robert Crawford CBE, Director General of the Imperial War Museum said: “The Imperial War Museum is keen to support the creation of ambitious and original artwork through its Art Commissions Committee and welcomes the opportunity to work with MIF in this way particularly as Imperial War Museum North in Manchester will celebrate its 5th birthday in 2007.”

Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen has, over the last decade, been influential in expanding the way in which artists work with film. Born in West London in 1969, he studied at Chelsea School of Art (1989-90) and Goldsmith’s College (1990-1993) in London, and at Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, in New York (1993-94). He won the first ICA Futures Award in 1996 and had a solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. In 1997, solo exhibitions of his work were held in Frankfurt, Eindhoven and New York, where he showed both at the Marian Goodman Gallery and at the Museum of Modern Art. In 1998 he won a DAAD artist’s scholarship to Berlin and, in 1999, besides exhibiting at the ICA and at the Kunsthalle in Zürich, won the Turner Prize.

One of Britain’s most influential artists, he has shown at the Art Institute of Chicago, taken part in Documenta X and Documenta XI in Kassel Germany, presented his outstanding Caribs’ Leap/Western Deep installation with Artangel in London and has recently presented a major exhibition at Musee d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris called ‘Speaking In Tongues’ which included the breathtaking new piece ‘Once Upon a Time’, a collaboration with NASA and linguist William Samarin. He is currently preparing major film commissions,
including feature films for Channel 4 films and for the 2007 Venice Biennale. In 2002 he was awarded the OBE.

‘For Queen and Country’ has been produced in collaboration with Thomas Dane Gallery, London. Steve McQueen is also represented by Marian Goodman Gallery, New York / Paris.

Photo Credit: Portrait by Thierry A. Bal

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