Val Carman

Val Carman is a visual artist based in Derbyshire, England. Her work explores loss and the way it affects our lives. Her work is always temporary; even large-scale sculptural installations are ultimately intended to be removed from their sites.

Her work in relation to the First World War spans over twenty-one years, beginning with a residency for the Passchendaele Peace Concerts in 1997. This is her second residency at In Flanders Fields Museum.

She has worked professionally as a photographer, teacher and arts project manager, and was a board member of Q Arts and Arts in the Peak Derbyshire.

Between August 2014 and August 2018, British artist Val Carman toured the UK and Ireland with her installation Assembly. The installation consisted of five chairs from the church at Passchendaele and a large register from the In Flanders Fields Museums List of Names, which contains over 174,000 names of the dead from the UK and Ireland who fell on Belgian soil during the First World War. The installation visited 23 locations and travelled a total of 7600 km. At each location, the public were invited to write the story of their relationship with the Great War on the opposite white page of the register, using names they knew or with others.

From 24 August to 9 November 2018, Assembly can be seen at the In Flanders Fields Museum. In addition to Journey, an account of Assembly's journey, Val Carman will show a second installation as Artist in Residence at the museum: Regret, a silent, poetic space about the intimate grief of the affected families, the empty spaces (chairs) left in the houses, but on a global scale. For the last time, the big book with the 174,000 names and the many hundreds of stories entered over the last four years will also be on display. Once again, the public will have the opportunity to add their story. The register will then be kept at the Research Centre.

Assembly reaches its apotheosis, Memorial Chairs, on the final weekend of the centenary commemorations. The perspective then shifts from the UK and Ireland to the whole world. A chair will travel to Ypres from each of the more than 120 countries of the world from which people died in Belgium during the First World War. The chairs have been collected worldwide by the In Flanders Fields Museum and by people who want to be part of this unique project. They will be collected by the international freight company DHL, which is supporting the project. On 9 November, the chairs will move in procession from the courtyard of the Cloth Hall to Astrid Park, north of the Cathedral, where they will form the unique installation Memorial Chairs, together with lanterns that will illuminate them as if in a vigil. This third installation is part of the programme of the final weekend of the Centenary of the Flemish Government.

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