Man on Fire (2023)

Man on Fire (2023, Tim Shaw RA, Bronze) responds to widely circulated press images of a British soldier fleeing his burning vehicle during the 2003 Iraq War, his body engulfed by flames. It also draws on images of the 2007 Glasgow airport attack. It is a work, Shaw says, “that is essentially about terror and the fight for survival.” Standing outside Salford’s Imperial War Museum North, it is well situated for the visitors to contemplate and reflect upon.

What makes the image more palatable is its blackness, the bronze being a dull shade of grey. Had the man’s skin borne a familiar tone, the fire been a hideous orange and his uniform a familiar khaki, it might have been unbearable. The dull monochrome reminds us that this is a piece of ‘safe’ art. Yet this is the very colour that such burnt man would become; dull and ashen, dark and singed.

I do not understand the doctrine of hell, much less like it. Yet these are not reasons for doubting it. Whether someone burns forever, or the flames are metaphorical for the endless, punitive process of destroying the sinful natures of rebellious humans, taking the whole of eternity expunge and purge, one cannot say. The eternal death of which hell speaks is horrific, and something that rightly appalls us. It is worse than catching fire or being attacked in times of war; it is so dreadful a prospect, that God sent His Son into our world to rescue us from so horrid a perishing.

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. John 3:16