Everyman

In 'Red Sky', Barrett uses cosmic and human dimensions to illustrate the binding forces, both universal and particular, that are expressed by acts of individual and collective commemoration. 

Barrett seeks in this work to express a belief that all matter belongs to a cycle of creation and destruction.

Inspired by Owen's poem 'Greater Love', this work depicts a field covered with white crosses. The refrain 'Greater Love' is an extract from a biblical quote: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" and is often used to commemorate fallen soldiers. 

Owen's poem foreshadows the mass grief experienced by communities who lost sons, fathers and relatives in the war. Owen died in battle one week before the Armistice in November, 1918.

In 'Suicide in the Trenches', Sassoon recounts a young British soldier's depression and suicide on the Western Front. Presented in three short stanzas, the poem uses rhyme and meter, typical of a nursery rhyme, to distance the reader from the horror of the event being narrated.

Barrett uses a simple motif of a falling leaf to convey the soldier's mental decline.

Owen's poem 'Dulce et decorum est' describes the fatal terror following a poison gas attack. The Latin title means "sweet and honourable". Owen writes of the horrible death of a soldier from gas. Barrett's works portray the prelude, dread, and aftermath of the attack and conclude with a body unceremoniously draped on a horse-drawn wagon to be taken away and buried.

'Remember Me' is thematically linked to Owen's poem 'Strange Meeting', but draws its inspiration from the artist's own reflections on war, loss and remembrance. 

In May 1917, Owen was transported down the Somme Canal on a hospital barge after being wounded. In the poem Owen likens his trip to that made by King Arthur, the mythical English King, to the island of Avalon. In two related works, Barrett contrasts the sun-drenched bow of the barge with its shaded stern, eerily portending Owen's death in battle during the crossing of the Sambre–Oise Canal on 4 November 1918.

In 'Banishment', Barrett quotes the text of Sassoon's poem on the back of a soldier as he looks toward a battlefield in the distance.

Sassoon wrote 'Banishment' while convalescing at Craiglockhart War Hospital for Officers in 1917. He had been diagnosed with shell-shock after publicly criticising the British Government's motives for continuing the war.

Owen's description of soldiers huddled together in 'one of the many mouths of hell' provides the inspiration for this work by Barrett.

As in much of Owen's and Sassoon's war poetry, these words reflect the squalid and dehumanising conditions soldiers on both sides of the conflict had to endure.

Owen wrote 'Anthem for Doomed Youth' while convalescing at Craiglockhart War Hospital in 1917. The poem contrasts traditional funeral rites with the reality of dying on the Western Front. Barrett portrays the individual sacrifice and loss of individuality revealed through Owen's poetry in his expressive though indistinct portrayals of soldiers.

In 'Survivors', Sassoon addresses the psychological torments commonly suffered by soldiers. For the duration of the war shell shock was treated as a temporary ailment that, it was thought, could be cured by brief periods of convalescence.

In Sassoon's poem, however, the psychological damage of war is presented as a deep and long-lasting change in the soldier's outlook towards life.

Barrett has based this work on Sassoon's poem 'Autumn'. He visualises the seasonal metaphor of a 'westering furnace' into which the lives of youthful soldiers are blown like autumn leaves. 

A large stain of blood sits beyond the barren landscape as though it were a setting sun.

Owen's fragmentary poem farewelling a dying soldier is represented by Barrett by the light fading over a war-ravaged landscape.

While Owen's deeply personal poem recollects the experience of a fellow soldier dying, Barrett's work draws on the landscape metaphors in Owen's poem using the environment to remind us of the great loss to community that resulted from the death of each soldier.

Barrett depicts a silhouette of a soldier against the showering light of an illumination flare. 

Sassoon's poem 'Golgotha' describes the experience of a soldier on sentry duty in the middle of the night. Peering into the briefly illuminated dark that surrounds him the guard hears only the sound of guns and mirthless laughter. According to the Gospels, Golgotha is the site where Jesus Christ was crucified.

This work is rare in referencing a specific battle. The northern French commune of Carnoy was the site of intense fighting and mine explosions during the first Battle of the Somme in 1916. 

Barrett's menacing red sky on the horizon is as evocative of war as it is of a peaceful summer sunset. The battle of Mametz Wood proved to be a scene of particularly harsh fighting with hand to hand combat and significant casualties amongst the division of Royal Welsh Fusilliers to which Sassoon belonged.

In his works for Owen's poem 'Strange Meeting', Barrett depicts two soldiers just after their meeting in an underground tunnel. In Owen's haunting poem a British soldier descends into a netherworld tunnel where he encounters a German soldier that he had killed in the heat of battle the day before.

"There watched I for the dead; but no ghost woke. Each one whom life exiled I named and called. But they were all too far, or dumbed, or thralled, And never one fared back to me or spoke...."  Wilfred Owen