Biscuit art has bite
A Kiwi artist is creating a tasteful, and tasty, new World War I memorial made of biscuits.
Kingsley Baird, designer of the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Wellington, intends to build a memorial made of 18,000 Anzac biscuits in France.
These are not just any Anzacs; Baird has designed cookie cutters to portray Kiwi, Aussie, French and German soldiers.
The idea may seem bizarre but Baird, an associate professor of creative arts at Massey University in Wellington, said it was about the changing nature of memory.
‘‘ Memorials are often built out of stone and bronze, and with that comes a concept of memory lasting forever,’’ he said. ‘‘ But it doesn’t last forever.’’
The memorial uses the biscuits to ask questions about how we remember the Anzacs and the other soldiers who died.
‘‘It’s about the short-lived nature of memory.’’
The sight of massed ranks of biscuit soldiers stacked in rows brings home the cost of the war.
They are mass-produced, just as soldiers were churned out in World War I.
But each will be individual, just as each soldier was an individual. Some of the biscuits have limbs missing, to remember soldiers disabled in battle.
The artwork, Tomb, is part of Baird’s stay as artist- in- residence at the Historial de la Grande Guerre museum in Peronne, northern France. Tomb will be on show for eight months.
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