Black sunflower art raises awareness of the war in Ukraine

An artist who has been painting sunflowers black says he hopes the work will help raise awareness about the war in Ukraine.

About 100 sunflowers were planted by artist Duncan McKellar on a plot of lawn next to Bristol's City Hall.

McKellar planted the flowers as a "guerilla artwork memorial" last year but has since been given permission and is painting the plants black as they naturally die as a way of further raising awareness of the conflict.

"Black itself is synonymous with death, the flowers themselves have died and they're arranged in a grid which is intended to look like war graves," said McKellar of his artwork entitled Flowers for the Fallen.

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McKellar says that he plans to use the black painted flowers as the basis for a planned exhibition in February, which will mark the fifth anniversary of the war.

The artist says the work is intended to commemorate people that have died on both sides of the conflict.

Neither side publishes their casualty figures, but estimates put the total losses from both Russia and Ukraine in the hundreds of thousands.

Western support and public attention for the war has fluctuated over the previous four years.

Zhenya Alshkil is a Ukrainian living in Bath who founded a group called Friends of Oleksandriya, which has been supporting Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees living in the UK since the start of the war.

Alshkil says that "British people have done a lot" for Ukraine but says the war continues to escalate.

"Many Ukrainians went back home [over the summer] because there is a strong pull to go home and also fathers could be fighting or they can't leave Ukraine because they're under 60 and there is martial law which stops them from joining their families here," she said.

"Many of them came back just now and they're in a very poor state, the situation escalated on 27 August.

"The drone attacks lasted almost non-stop apart from a few days when Americans came for peace talks, but otherwise Kyiv is under fire all the time."

Alshkil has put on a number of cultural events and art installations in Bath and says they are a great way to build positive cultural ties and help support her country from the UK.

McKellar says he hopes his work can also help put Ukraine back in to people's minds.

"I don't think many people are walking down Park Street thinking about Ukraine but hopefully as they hit College Green that thought would be put back into their head," he said.

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