An artist in Sussex has created a huge sculpture made from knives handed in during a Government-backed amnesty – and the result is something powerful and quite chilling.
More than 100,000 knives gathered from more than 40 police forces were used to create the sculpture – which was created by the British Ironwork Centre as a national monument to victims of knife crime.
The project started two years ago with the backing of the Home Office and the Knife Angel was put together and designed by 25-year-old sculptor Alfie Bradley.
The ironworks hope the statue will one day go on display on Trafalgar Square’s fourth plinth once it is finished, but an application cannot be submitted for the statue until its final weight is known.
The angel is a theme from the campaign Surrender Your Knife, which the ironworks supports in aiming to allow knives to be surrendered anonymously to get them off Britain’s streets.
“The sculpture will be a very poignant reminder to us all of the victims of knife crime and it’s vital that we continue to raise awareness of the extremely serious consequences of carrying a knife,” said Police and Crime Commissioner Katy Bourne of Sussex Police.
