Much of Paddy's work focuses on how the face can be, and is transformed or manipulated both through deliberate and unintentional intervention and the way in which we subsequently respond to these changes, most notably in the design and production of his 'Face Corsets', producing facial implants for clinical use and latterly his output for 'Project Facade': responding to the surgical and personal stories of facially injured WWI servicemen.

Paddy's work has been exhibited and published widely and displayed in the permanent collections a number of museums in the UK and USA including the Wellcome Collection and The Museum of Arts and Design New York in addition to presenting at The Victoria & Albert Museum and Science Museum London amongst others.

Most recently Paddy's Face Corset designs have featured under his brand name 'Patrick Ian Hartley' in a number of premiere fashion publications including AnOther Magazine, Vogue Italia/China/Germany/Turkey, V Magazine and W Magazine. His work has been shot by leading fashion photographers including Rankin, Tim Walker, Michelangelo Di Battista (for Noomi Rapace) and Nick Knight (for Lady Gaga).

In parallel with his artistic practice, Paddy held the post of Curator at Brass Gallery Leeds for 10 years, presenting the work of new and established artists over 60 exhibitions. He also speaks as invited guest lecturer on his 20+ years in the creative industries at Colleges and Universities throughout the UK and delivers tuition in Photoshop and Illustrator to both private clients to students on his courses hosted by The Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

Paddy originates from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire and is a graduate of the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff with a Masters Degree in Sculpture and Ceramics. He is currently based in London’s East End and runs his practice from his studio base in London Bridge.

The project sits within the key objectives of EU INTERREG IV (a): that is, to reinforce cooperation by fostering partnerships between European neighbours and to achieve improved integration of geographic areas that face common problems but are separated by national borders. The cooperation area (Devon and Picardie) remains marked by the legacy of the 1st World War. The unprecedented facial injuries seen in that conflict also led to the development of radical surgical approaches, leading to a new phase in the history of reconstructive maxillofacial surgery in Britain as well as in France. These unprecedented developments in the medical field also have long-term consequences for our perception and understanding of the face. The new understandings of the face which emanate from WWI feed into our societal approach to facial difference, into our conception of history and into contemporary artistic practice.

Study of the injured, disfigured and repaired face will address the following specific objectives:

• Develop and utilise the knowledge base concerning the experience of disfigured soldiers during the First World War by means of a transdisciplinary, transnational and transgenerational approach;
• Assess the long-term cultural and artistic legacy of the gueules cassées and the impact of WWI disfigurement on contemporary representations of the face;
• Enhance the dissemination of the documentary, artistic, societal and medical material relating to the gueules cassées and their legacy;
• Promote integration and understanding of the issues linked to perception and disability linked to disfigurement;
• Design and develop an educational project in order to bring about changes in understanding of facial difference.

Lead partner

UK project lead and coordinator, strand 3 (Representing the Face)

Project collaborators at Exeter

The project includes a series of research workshops bringing together multidisciplinary teams. Workshop activity is organised around three project strands:

• Medical practices and epistemology
• Historical discourses of disfigurement and questions of social (re)integration
• Representing the face

The schedule of workshops includes:

• Representing and Historicising Les Gueules Cassées
• The Face and the Passions
• Facial Difference and Social (Re)integration

1914FACES2014 Les Gueules cassées: disfigurement and its legacies

University of Exeter, 12th-14th March 2015

The First World War saw unprecedented numbers of facially injured soldiers survive the battlefield. The experience of these gueules cassées, as they became known in France, has given rise to a unique cultural history, and one which is now being rewritten in the centenary years of the First World War. This conference, arising from the INTERREG IV-funded project 1914FACES2014, led by the Institut Faire Faces and the University of Exeter, assesses the legacy of the gueules cassées and the broader issues concerning disfigurement and expression at stake there.

The First World War and its immediate aftermath saw unprecedented innovations in the surgical field, with surgeons such as Hippolyte Morestin and Harold Gillies pioneering techniques which would transform facial reconstructive surgery. Just as artistic practice fed into surgical practice (in the work of sculptors as mask-makers or epithesists), so the radically new forms of surgery developed at this time altered the context in which artists represented the face. At the same time, understandings and representations of the face have radically changed since the First World War, from segregation of facially injured veterans following the First World War to recognition of facial difference as a protected characteristic in the 2010 Equality Act. This conference will explore the disputed histories of the gueules cassées in the British and French contexts and beyond, along with a broad-based consideration of the face and facial difference. It will coincide with a major exhibition entitled Faces of Conflict: the Impact of the First World War on Art and Reconstructive Surgery at the Royal Albert Memorial Museum & Art Gallery, Exeter.

We are delighted to announce the following keynote speakers: Prof Bernard Devauchelle (Institut Faire Faces), Dr Suzannah Biernoff (Birkbeck, University of London), James Partridge (Changing Faces) and Louisa Young (novelist).

Prof Bernard Devauchelle is Professor of Maxillofacial Surgery and Stomatology, University of Amiens, France, and the president of the Institut Faire Faces. Prof Devauchelle carried out the first partial face transplant in 2005. His many publications include La Fabrique du visage : de la physiognomonie antique à la première greffe (with François Delaporte, 2010).

Dr Suzannah Biernoff is Senior Lecturer in Modern and Contemporary Visual Culture, Birbeck, University of London.  Her research has spanned medieval and modern periods: her publications include Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages (2002), and she currently works on war and visual culture in early twentieth-century Britain. Her book Portraits of Violence: War and the Aesthetics of Disfigurement is due out later this year.

James Partridge is Founder and Chief Executive of Changing Faces, the leading UK charity supporting and representing people with disfigurements. James was appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 2005 and was the winner of Britain’s most admired Charity Chief Executive for 2010 and the Beacon Prize for Leadership, also in 2010.

Louisa Young graduated in modern history from Trinity College, Cambridge. She is the author of thirteen books, including The Book of the Heart (a cultural history of the human heart); A Great Task of Happiness, the life of Kathleen Scott, and most recently the novel My Dear I Wanted to Tell You, in which facial injury looms large, and The Heroes’ Welcome (HarperCollins, 2011 and 2014), set during and immediately after WWI. The third of this series is to be published in 2015. Her books have been selected for Cityread for London and the Richard & Judy Book Club 2012, nominated for the Impac Award, won the Galaxy Audiobook of the Year 2011, and been shortlisted for the Wellcome Prize, the Costa Novel of the Year, the Galaxy Book of the Year and the Orange Prize. Between them they are published in 36 languages.

You can view the Programme here.

Facial injury and disfigurement

These resources originate from the 1914FACES2014 INTERREG-funded research project (2013-15), a collaboration between the University of Exeter, the Institut Faire Faces and the Université de Picardie Jules Verne. The project is concerned with the legacy of the facially injured soldiers of the First World War and includes historians, surgeons, psychologists and scholars working across literary and visual culture and the medical humanities.

Facial injury and disfigurement since the First World War

Unprecedented numbers of servicemen received facial injuries during the First World War. Estimates put the numbers of facially injured at over 60,000 in the UK alone. Many required complex and difficult surgery, which led to the development of new techniques. At the same time, society had to think in new ways about how to react to people with a disfigurement.

This is an aspect of First World War history we think deserves to be better known. At the same time, addressing this subject gives us an opportunity to think about how we understand and respond to disfigurement today. These two aims underlie the questions highlighted in both resource packs.

There are two resource packs, which are available to download from this page:

1. First World War Facial Injury & Reconstructive Surgery

These resources look at the history of the facially injured soldiers of the First World War and the ways in which medicine and society responded to their needs. They are particularly suitable for GCSE syllabi concerned with Surgery in the Industrial Modern World and the impact of the First World War on surgery, or Middle School syllabi in the USA. Although we often think of Archibald McIndoe as the pioneer of facial reconstructive surgery, in fact crucial work was undertaken during the First World War by Sir Harold Gillies.

• 1914FACES2014 WWI facial surgery educational resources
• 1914FACES2014 WWI facial surgery teacher pack‌
• (iii) WWI facial surgery- French version pdf
• (iv) WWI facial surgery- French version ppt‌‌‌

2. Disfigurement and Representing the Face

These resources consider how disfigurement is viewed today and look back at First World War facial injury. They are particularly suitable for PSHE (Personal, Social and Health Education) at key stage 3 and 4 in the UK and for English and History GCSE in the UK, or Middle School in the USA.

• 1914FACES2014 disfigurement and representation educational resources
• 1914FACES2014 disfigurement and representation teacher pack‌

For each pack there are two files:

(i) Resources
(ii) Teacher’s pack

Please download any which may be useful to you.

We are always happy to have feedback on these resources, via email.

For more information and resources about appearance and disfigurement please visit Changing Faces website, caring campaigners who work to help people with a disfigurement.