Description
Object description
image: The interior of a wooden hut with two large windows behind giving onto sunlit green foliage. In the centre of the floor is a tin bath full of water. On the right two women talk. Beyond them another woman supervises a child washing. Seven girls can be seen around the room at various activities and a lone baby sits on the floor. Lines of white washing are spread across the bunks. The women and children are severely emaciated.
Label
As the war progressed, and with it Cole's experience of extraordinary and often horrific events, his work became
increasingly macabre, with a symbolic use of colour evident in the unsettling yellow-green cast of the painting.
In the image of internment there is an anguish in the skeletal figures appearing to carry out daily domestic activity. The unimaginable had become every-day. The angular malnourished children with stick-like limbs and hollow eyes become almost translucent and insubstantial.
The painting has an underlying theme of cleansing – the bath of water, the swathes of white sheets and draped washing and the clarity of the pale sunshine illuminating the room – all suggest a quiet redemption from the dark days of imprisonment.
Singapore's British civilian population was interned when Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. Sime Road and Changi Gaol were both used as holding camps although Changi was later used for prisoners-of-war returning from work on the Thai-Burma railway and civilians were then concentrated in Sime Road camp. After the camps were liberated the inmates continued to live there for some time, having no-where else to
go.
Label
The interior of a wooden hut, with skeletal figures carrying out daily domestic activities. The British civilian
population was interned in Syme Road when Singapore fell to the Japanese in 1942. After the camp was liberated, the inmates continued to
live there, having nowhere else to go. However, the painting has an underlying theme of cleansing – the bath filled with water, the swathes
of white sheets, and the draped washing suggest a quiet redemption from the dark days of imprisonment.
History note
War Artists Advisory Committee Commission
Inscription
Leslie Cole '45