FIRST, some of his ashes were blasted into the sky on a rocket. Now a batch of the cremated remains of Milton Shulman, the late theatre critic, are to be displayed in a gallery as a work of art, writes Olivia Cole.

Shulman’s son Jason, a sculptor, has separated the ashes into different-coloured bands displayed in a glass tube.

Jason’s treatment of the remains of his father, who died in 2004 aged 90, caused some surprise among his family, but they remain supportive. Shulman’s widow Drusilla Beyfus, the etiquette writer, said she backed her son’s “desire to perpetuate his father in a very individual way”. “The issue was not whether he should make something but whether or not he should put it on display. My view was — show,” she said.

Beyfus said her daughters Alexandra — editor of Vogue magazine — and Nicola were aware of the piece.

The work, A Piece of My Father, will go on display at Madder Rose, an east London gallery, next month. Jason Shulman said he had “no qualms at all” about using the ashes of his father. He had the idea after worrying about whether the ashes given to families after cremations were from the right body. “Once I was sure that what I had in this hideous plastic bucket was my dad, and not just some ashes from the fireplace, I started,” he said.

The sculptor used an electromagnet to separate the different elements of his father’s ashes, which appear as coloured layers he describes as like a “sand trinket”. One band of ash consists of iron residue and the whole sculpture is suspended in mid-air using a magnet.

The work is not the first destination for Milton Shulman’s ashes. Shortly after the critic died, Jason wrapped some of his father’s ashes in pages of the Evening Standard — for which Shulman covered first nights for 38 years — attached them to a rocket and fired them over his father’s bookmaker’s premises in Belgravia, London.

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