Located in North West Belgium, the small town of Oosteeklo recently held a weekend-long peace festival, timed to coincide with the true end of the First World War.

Records first reveal the existence of Oosteeklo in 1226, today it has a population of just shy of 3000 people.

From an approach by representatives of Oosteeklo’s church, Recovering The Past was commissioned for display as part of the festival. Such a good offer, and with us all too keen to promote the work, we agreed, and the proposal became reality!

Recovering The Past is not a project about war, it is a project about people. Oosteeklo suffered through both world wars as an occupied nation; it’s population will have suffered many social consequences as a result. This exhibition represents not just this villages’ survivors of those wars, but the survivors of all villages, and towns, and cities, in all wars the world over. 

The Oosteeklo Church team engineered a fantastically creative display from raiding local farms of their unused pallets. As a result, is one of my favourite displays of the exhibition.