YORK Art Gallery has a striking new addition to its collection.

The British American Scarecrow, created in 2017 by Mohammed Sami, depicts a scarecrow draped in colours of Britain and the United Statesd against a backdrop of destruction caused by conflict in Iraq. The painting, which featured in the Gallery’s exhibition The Sea is the Limit last summer, draws on Sami’s first-hand experiences as an artist at the Ministry of Culture in Baghdad, before he came to Europe in 2007.

It will now become part of the gallery’s permanent collection.

Dr Beatrice Bertram, senior curator at York Art Gallery, said: “This contemporary piece is a fantastic addition to our permanent collections and we are delighted Mohammed Sami has made it available to us. It conflates themes treated elsewhere in the gallery’s collection: namely war, memory and loss, and shares strands with other key wartime landscapes.”