medal, art

The White Feather Medal.

Christine Massey, bronze, 2016

While New Zealanders pulled together to support the war effort, it was also a time when dissension was problematic. Resistance to enlist was regarded as shirking duty and cowardice. Opposition was seen as unpatriotic.

“This ‘medal’ was inspired by stories of courage in the First World War. It also explores the conventions between men and women at the time. Despite suffragettes making themselves heard, many women assumed that men should go to war.

I wanted to make a medal which recognised the bravery of those men who did not go to war—one that subverts the usual reasons for medals.

On the back of the medal is a quote from a Dornford Yates short story:

“Dolly never took her eyes from his face. He did not look at her at all.”

In that silence, under the female gaze, he makes his decision and joins up.

Otherwise he’d have had to have awarded himself the white feather.”

Christine Massey