The winning design for the first UK memorial to journalists killed while reporting on conflict has been revealed.
Artist Wolfgang Buttress created End of Copy | Words of Light, drawing on two traditional sign-offs to the end of a submitted piece of news content: “###” and “-30-”.
The symbols are pressed onto aluminium columns that make up the main shape of the memorial.
The permanent artwork is being created for the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire, with a companion piece at St Bride’s Church, Fleet Street.
The On the Record campaign to create the memorial waslaunched in 2024by Andrew Baud of communications agency TALA, supported by Press Gazette.
The memorial, which has secured £300,000 of a £1m funding target, will be supported by a complementary sculpture at journalists’ church St Bride’s on London’s Fleet Street and an online record of journalists killed in conflict and their work produced in conjunction with Press Gazette.
Buttress, whose winning work was selected bya national design competitionthrough the Royal Society of Sculptors, said: “This memorial is about presence rather than proclamation. Journalism at its best is an act of service, often quiet, frequently risky and, in the most tragic cases, fatal.
“My ambition was to create a work that acknowledges loss while leaving space for reflection, humility and care. It is a memorial shaped as much by what is felt as what is seen.”
Buttress was announced as the winning artist by Chris Elmore MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Foreign Office, at an event hosted by Bloomberg in London on Wednesday night.
The description of the artwork says: “Conceived as rays of light, the columns are arranged in a Fibonacci spiral, creating an immersive space that functions both as a beacon and a place of quiet reflection.
Source: Press Gazette
