Michael Sandle, born (1936) and brought up on the Isle of Man, is best known as a sculptor but spent most of his time whilst a student at the Slade in the etching and lithography studios. In a statement made in 1988 he averred that printmaking was a seminal activity for him, which significantly affected his development as an artist, particularly the way he continued to draw and he confessed to sometimes having a longing to make prints.

After a period of working in the USA and Canada, where the image of Mickey Mouse became a kind of metaphor for American military aggression in his work, he has spent much of his professional life in Germany at the Academy of Art at Karlsruhe. His work addresses the brutality of war, and often represents weaponry, machinery and other military accuoutrements. Here, a machine gun is dissected and displayed with all the coolness of an anatomical or architectural drawing.