Hare Hill is an exact replica of the type of bomb carried by the German Junkers Ju 88 plane during the Second World War. The bomb is cast in rubber and sits on a black granite plinth in a gap in Jupiter Artland’s boundary wall. Mounted on the boundary wall nearby is a bronze cast of a model Junkers Ju 88.

In 2010 Henry Castle was the recipient of Jupiter Artland’s summer residency, having responded to an open call to graduates from the University of the Arts, London. Hare Hill emerged as a result of the residency and was installed at Jupiter Artland in 2012. The artwork was created in response to a historical event, now subsumed within the local landscape.

During the Second World War, a German Junkers Ju 88 crashed into the nearby Pentland Hills after a bombing raid that targeted Bonnington House. The bronze cast of the German plane fuses modes of commemoration familiar to generations of model-making schoolchildren with those of the sculptural tradition. A second cast of the aircraft was buried at the crash site itself, connecting the two sites.

“The thought of a complete plane buried in the hill as opposed to the cairns of twisted and mangled fuselage of the original one, visible on the surface, holds a certain poetry for me.”

Henry Castle