Alexandra Hills artist Beverley Teske is collecting 61,555 bottle caps for an installation to be staged at the Redland Museum in October.
Each bottle cap will represent an Australian soldier who died in World War 1. To date, Ms Teske said she had collected about one-third of the number of caps required and asked interested people to drop their caps at the museum before and during the installation.
The exhibition will also feature three large paintings, with one entitled Under Clear Blue Skies they Came to Die also representing the 61,555 soldiers with hand drawn crosses. Another painting also has 130,845 crosses representing all soldiers who died at Gallipoli.
“The original piece was inspired when I saw Russell Crow in The Water Diviner. It really moved me that all these people died. I wanted to do something to acknowledge that,” she said.
“It wasn’t just the soldiers who died. Their deaths affected so many more people at home as well.”
Ms Teske describes her work as non confrontational, but moving.
The exhibition will be entitled The Real Cost of War.