Sandra Bromley and Wallis Kendal
Collateral Damage
artists bio
Sandra Bromley BFA, CCHS Fellow, RCA
Citizenship: Canadian
Sandra Bromley’s art has appeared in solo and group exhibitions in Europe, Asia, and North America. Her multidisciplinary, interactive art includes traditional sculpture as well as video, sound, photography, and installation. She works solo and in collaboration with artists as well as with professionals in other disciplines.
Graduating from the University of Alberta in 1979 with a BFA (Distinction) in sculpture, Bromley has received numerous awards throughout her career, including the 2000 Salute to Excellence Arts Award from the City of Edmonton; a 2002-03 Canadian Consortium for Human Security Fellowship (artwork concerned with issues of women and children in post-conflict countries) that took her to work in Sierra Leone and Cambodia; a Global Woman of Vision Award; Honoured Alumni Award, University of Alberta; member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts; YWCA Woman of Distinction, Edmonton Hall of Fame (artist/builder); and the Queen’s Jubilee Medal.
Since 2000, Sandra has focused her artistic work on themes of peace and conflict. As with much in the world during Covid, her personal environment as well as her art became smaller, more intimate and focused on beauty in the ordinary and our relationship with isolation.
Instagram: @artofpeacemaking
Wallis Kendal BEd
Citizenship: Canadian
Wallis Kendal’s pursuit for social justice has been amplified by the influences from a myriad of individuals who shaped his world view, as educator, artist, writer, youth worker and activist, Wallis has devoted his life to address the injustice wreaked upon indigenous youth, while exerting his views on the despairing debate over small arms and the destructive force of armed conflict.
Wallis received his BEd, from the University of Alberta in 1969. He taught school in Edmonton, and over the years traveled to a number of developing countries, where he learned what it meant to have privilege, in a predominately unprivileged world. Travel prepared him for his eventual meeting with Sandra Bromley, and the creation of not only the Gun Sculpture and other peace related art, but the formation of the iHuman Youth Society, dedicated to the lives of vulnerable youth.
Wallis has been recognized as one of Canada’s Ten Top Hero’s in Time magazine, 2005, Salute to Excellence in the arts 2000, Alumni Award from the University of Alberta, 2006, and his been the subject of a number of documentaries, including the Fifth Estate, 2014.
artist Statement
Collateral Damage
Guns, Knives, Landmines and Violence: Deactivated
In a world plagued by war, with the indiscriminate and bloody slaughter of innocents, the voices of peace must not remain silent. The Collateral Damage multi-media art installation is a visceral representation of the means of violence; it’s a visual scream for a better, more peaceful world.
Collateral Damage, and its monumental sister exhibit The Gun Sculpture, are testaments to the determination and dedication of its creators: Canadian artists Sandra Bromley and Wallis Kendal. It took five long years of struggle to bring to life, and could not possibly be made in the world today. The artists gathered over 8000 weapons from conflict zones, like Belfast in Northern Ireland, apartheid South Africa, the Arab-Israeli conflict and from the Canadian Armed forces and police. They painstakingly deactivated and assembled the weapons into a vigorous statement refuting the legitimization of violence. Collateral Damage has travelled far and wide, but was created in an era with a more Idealized state of mind. Noble sentiments of peace were welcomed, but discounted, taken for granted. Today, as the world witnesses a rising tide of mass killings and the return of brutalism not seen since the Nazi horrors of World War II, the precious and precarious veneer of civility we have taken for granted for so long seems to be unravelling right before our eyes. The Collateral Damage exhibit captures the true horror of war and violent crime, translating the means of violence into an impassioned message of peace. People are galvanized by the undeniable message… that weapons of violence, while they both attract our attention, also represent our ultimate failure as human beings.