This sculpture has a long story. After taking ten years to build, upon its eventual completion in 1997, Robert Bryce Muir's 'Mea Culpa' went on display in one of London's 'hidden galleries', before being moved to the city's Concord Gallery the following year. In 1999, the piece was moved to Brewery Arts in Cirencester, and remained there until 2005, when it was transferred to the Rufford Sculpture Park in Nottingham. It wasn't until 2006 when these two imposing men found themselves on a quiet stretch of Grizedale's Bogle Crag walk. In 2021 they were moved once again due to felling in the area, and can now be found just off the Millwood Trail on the other side of the forest.

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After such a gruelling tour of the country, you would think the pair have earned a rest, but as Robert Bryce Muir explains on his website:

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"Two larger than life-size figures are locked in a mutually dependent struggle for survival. One figure hangs from a steel support whilst the other is pulling on the rope to create an equilibrium, holding the tension: a clash of titans where neither will yield... The work is an interpretation of the final conflict between Achilles and Hector in Homer's chronicle 'The Iliad', a monumental struggle which is both a fight to the death but also a fight for life."

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Muir was born in North Yorkshire in 1962 and 'Mea Culpa' is one of his most famous works. He says of his approach to sculpting:

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"I like to use steel, copper, lead and concrete as I'm fascinated by engineering and how materials can be constructed and transformed by industrial processes such as welding, riveting and casting"

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In 2008 the renowned fashion designer Alexander McQueen personally commissioned a sculpture by Muir for his flagship store on Los Angeles' Melrose Avenue. The result was 'Angel of the Americas', a figure similar to those seen in 'Mea Culpa', seemingly levitating above the shoppers, bisected by a glass panel in the roof.

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Also by this artist:

Janus 2017