Project Facade: About

• Paddy Hartley
• Passchendaele
• Pedicle Tube

Over the past six years, Paddy Hartley has successfully devised, fundraised and delivered a series of highly successful Artist in Residence programs, exhibitions and educational/public engagement events. Projects include his Year of the Artist residency at The Thackray Medical Museum and West Yorkshire Playhouse funded project at The Royal Armouries, both of which took place in Leeds and received critical acclaim. These residencies included education programmes devised and delivered by Hartley for schools and young people as part of his direct approach to public engagement. He has also created and delivered numerous events for families and young people at The Victoria and Albert Museum for exhibitions such as ‘Earth and Fire’, ‘Gothic’, the forthcoming Vivienne Westwood retrospective. He is also part of the team of artists at The VandA who have delivered the ‘Museums Award’ nominated ‘Every Object Tells a Story’ I.T. event in conjunction with Ultralab and Channel 4. For the past three years Hartley has also worked as Curator of The Brahm Gallery in Leeds staging over thirty exhibitions for which he has selected artists, produced press and design material, installed work and hosted previews and charity events. He is also responsible for managing the Gallery finances and organizing payment of artists through sale of work. He continues to manage the Gallery from London but is his last year in post due to concentrating on Project Facade.

The Third Battle of Ypres, commonly known as ’Passchendaele‘ commenced from 31st July 1917 until the fall of Passchendaele village on 6th November 1917. To this day the tactics employed are as controversial as those executed at the Battle of the Somme a little over a year earlier, and was the final great battle of attrition of the war. The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) incurred some 310,000 casualties, with a similar, lower, number of German casualties: 260,000. 

The tube pedicle was developed simultaneously yet independently by Sir Harold Gillies at the Queen’s Hospital Sidcup and ophthalmic surgeon Vladimir Petrovich Filatov in Odessa, Russia between 1916 and 1917. A tube pedicle is a flap of skin sewn down its long edges, with one end left attached to the site of origin, the other is attached to the site to be grafted.