During a tour of the Somme battlefields in the early 1960's, whilst researching his family ancestry, Steve Hurst witnessed the corroding artillery fragments, barbed wire and other metallic detritus strewn in the trenches of Northern France.
Hurst was attracted by the 'domestic' objects unearthed by local farmers and road builders. These finds demonstrated the common humanity of ordinary men caught up in an industrialised war, objects that gave no clue to uniform, race or national identity: a broken aluminium mug, wine bottles, knife and fork or a tin of sardines. Many years later Hurst cast these in bronze as a lasting tribute to the average man.

Having studied at the Ruskin School of Drawing, University of Oxford and then at Goldsmiths College (1959-60), Hurst trained in casting under the legendary bronze-founder Alberto Angeloni at the Royal College of Art (1968-9). In 1971, Hurst was invited by George Fullard to run the sculpture foundry at Chelsea School of Art and later became Head of Sculpture at the University of Ulster in Belfast (1979-81). Influenced both by the political situation there and frequent trips to explore the battlefields of the Somme, Hurst returned to Belfast in 1985 to stage a major solo show of work. Talking about his continued interest in and expression of war Hurst says: "Expressionist art feeds both on the subconscious and on childhood memory. This is not so marked as in Surrealism but it remains a potent force. It is also a demanding force. By the end of the exhibition in Belfast I was exhausted and I wanted to turn away from war as a subject. The horror and indescribable folly of all the European nations, the sacrifice of the best of their men depressed me. I concentrated on a mathematical, abstract form of art. Commercial galleries liked these sculptures as much as they disliked the Somme Series. The sculptures, in chromium plated steel or bronze, sold. I was a success but I was not myself and gradually the war came creeping back."

Hurst’s work, whether cast, fabricated, drawn or written, often actively questions common opinion and official history and contrasts it with his own personal experience. The enigmatic sculptures, collages and assemblages that result from these combined interests are instantly recognisable in form yet imbued with a poignant sense of the fragments of human life left behind after futile combat or disaster. Hurst has exhibited widely and in 2013 had a major retrospective exhibition at the In Flanders Fields Museum, Ypres. He lives and works in Oxfordshire.