The Memory
The Memory explores ideas of who we think we are and who we want to be. In 2025, Danny scoured through his old sketchbooks for inspiration, happening on a long-forgotten sketch made while waiting for a friend in Richmond in 2013. With little else to go by, Danny decided to realise the sketch in stone. It was not until about halfway through the relief carving that Danny revisited the site of the original sketch, the Church of St Mary Magdalene, that he realised it was in fact a sculpture of St George, atop a war monument. The figure in the sculpture wields a spear and holds a shield with the St George cross on it, but there is no dragon, which wasn’t in Danny’s original sketch.
The piece was developed during the Raise the Colours movement in the UK; a moment where British nationals raised the English and British flags mostly in suburban and rural areas. This created an unexpected and challenging context for the work, the movement was highly controversial and divisive, and Danny’s piece explores how memory and belief can be deeply personal and at times inflammatory. The Memory therefore sits between past and present, asking how symbols endure, and how their meanings change with us.
The Memory, 2025
Limestone
POA