The work was installed during February and March 2003 before the invasion of Iraq. The first line of the poem that gives the artwork its title is from one of the most well known poems from WW1 by Colonel John McCrae who died while on active duty in May 1918. This work was made with a 5m x 5m square patch of specifically cultivated long grass sown with seed in the backyard of the gallery. Onto this square of grass were planted hundreds of “poppies” made from the unused remains of the bottles from Wave~length and from copper wire from a local metal recycler. It was also a sculpture about painting. The references to poppies meant to evoke Monet’s paintings of fields of poppies from 1886. The grass square becoming a canvas of lush green. The haziness and rich paint of the impressionist painting was simulated by the grass and the “poppies” as they blew in the wind.
