The Willowfield Man 
2023

In 2023, I was lucky enough to recieve funding to pursue research abroad. I proposed a project where I’d visit Ireland and Denmark in order to reapproach the infamous bodies found in bogs across North West Europe. In visiting the bodies where they are now conserved in museums, I found myself experiencing a growing sadness over how they’ve been ripped from their chosen burial sites, now finding themselves under glass to be gawked at by people like myself. It made me think about whether there’s some sort of cut-off point from where a body is still a person that deserves the respect it was given at burial to when it becomes an object/artefact/curiosity. Is there any way of truly preserving dignity when showing one of these bodies in a museum?