In Memoriam III

Sarah Kent (see B. Robertson op. cit., p.64) comments that the present work is from a series intended to 'depict the victims of state persecution. They are intended as 'a tribute to all people who have died or suffered for their beliefs. These men are heroes in the sense that they are survivors, but they are also victims stripped of everything but their human courage'. With names such as 'Tribute' (1975 and 1977) and 'In Memoriam', they personify stoic resistance, their faces set in a mask of grim determination. Eyes stare blankly forward, numbed by suffering, or are closed against the blows. Lips are sealed into hard lines of endurance. Their struggles to withstand torture and humiliation are suggested by the smooth and resilient surface of the sculptures which, unlike Frink's earlier work, has been filed down in a slow and contemplative action - a process of erosion and attrition comparable to the slow wearing down of the victims' will. Subtle changes of form, emphasis and detail have transformed the earlier thugs into prisoners of conscience. The smooth surface of leather helmets now reads as skulls shaved to destroy personal dignity. The rims of goggles tightly hugging brow ridges and cheek-bones have become lines of stress or marks of despair. The blank stare that indicated dumb stupidity now becomes an inward gaze produced by suffering and isolation. Thick-set jaws have been chiselled and refined, bull necks have been slimmed down and lengthened, and foreheads heightened to construct the character of someone willing to die for his beliefs as opposed to somebody primed to kill before thinking or feeling'.