Today's sculpture: Tribute to the Dispossessed is another piece made in Turkey last summer, inspired by the book I was reading at the time: Birds Without Wings by Louis de Bernieres.
The book is set in the same village I was staying in, Kayakoy, a hauntingly beautiful ghost town, once occupied by both Greeks and Turks alike.
But at the end of the 1st world war Ataturk (the father of modern Turkey) set in place a whole range of social reforms, including the enforced emigration of thousands of Greeks from their Turkish homes.
Louis de Berniere captures the agony of this in his astonishingly beautiful book, and inspired me to make a portrait of one of these exiled Greek women.
I then took it to the top of the ruined town, to a little church, as a Tribute to the Dispossessed. (An idea given to me by my good friend Racey Vance with whom I was sharing the cottage).
Tribute to the Dispossessed By Kate Newlyn. Kayakoy 2013
Next year I'll make a portrait of a Turkish woman who's life was similarly disrupted by the enforced "importation" from Greece to Turkey, in this extraordinary "swap".
I haven't really analysed why this is so important to me, there must be some sort of connection I feel with the situation these people found themselves in. But in a way, it doesn't really matter, not knowing. Ideas for Art bubble up from unknown places sometimes - its the expressing of them that's important.
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(If you haven't read Birds Without Wings : do. Is especially this year -100 years on.
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I'll be regularly posting pics of sculptures on this blog now,
But if you want to see the ones already on my website, here's the link:
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