Betrayal of Innocence

The horrendous deeds of Jack and his hunters was a betrayal of the so-called innocence of children.

The most striking and haunting scene from the book for me was when the naval officer sees Jack as just 'a little boy who wore the remains of an extraordinary black cap on his red hair and who carried the remains of a pair of spectacles at his waist'. Till that moment we can easily forget that all those horrific deeds were done by such small children. This is why I made a single figure of Jack (to all appearances an innocent little boy until you see him casually holding a decapitated sow's head) and the dark shadow of his inner beast.

Jack is a sculpture made of recycled aluminium wire armature, newspaper papier-mâché, ceramic head and hemp hair, with a paper choirboy hat and belt, organic muslin shorts, ceramic knife and wire-framed glasses, and holding a ceramic sow's head.

I adjusted the colour of the photo using the picture tools in Word to give the effect of the bright sunlight and beautiful tropical colours of the island, which symbolises everything nice and innocent, in contrast to the sad and bloody head of the slain sow.