“The Greek and Roman Department at the British Museum kindly gave me permission to use Charcoal in their Galleries and whilst sketching the Elgin Marbles I became increasingly aware of the way Pheidias has depicted extreme violence in an almost balletic form. I was disturbed by this as we live in an era in which the death of civilians in war is described as “collateral damage” - to me an unacceptable hijack of language, designed to desensitise us to the consequences of organised violence. This is obviously an historical device to make war acceptable, so I decided to depict these young warriors in my own way and show them as sexless well-trained killers caught up in the State machine during a war and the Goddesses as culpable through their cold natures and use of sexuality in their encouragement of violence in young men.”