National Galleries of Scotland

This is one of a series of works, begun in 1949, in which the artist joined two or more figures together. He described the resulting sculptures as `a new organic unit - a simple mass of whatever shape I liked containing only that number of heads, limbs or other detail I felt necessary.? In this work, the children appear to have linked arms and are running or skipping in unison. Armitage was in charge of a War Office School during the Second World War, using models of aeroplanes and silhouettes to teach aircraft identification. This influenced the flat forms of his later work by making him particularly aware of shape. He has also acknowledged that his sculptures were affected by the shape of screens he had in his studio, which comprised a flat area with protruding feet.