[2] After enlisting in his home town on 9 November 1915 at 21 years of age, Pearl, in August 1916, became a sapper with the Australian 5 Field Company Engineers.
[3][4][5] He embarked from Sydney to Alexandria and then the Western Front (World War I) in France aboard HMAT Orsova on 11 March 1916.
[9][11] Military shell cases, other parts of shells, badges and buttons were just some of the war-related materials used by Pearl to assemble everyday objects such as a clock, a map of Tasmania and a hat pin stand, as is evidenced by the accessibility and digitisation of his work on the War Memorial's online collection (see external links for selection of images).
[11] The collection displays images of the objects together with Pearl's own field notes, which were unusual to find in First World War trench art.
[19] According to Corinne A. Kratz, Pearl was unconsciously engaging with features of material culture such as bricolage and recyclia in producing trench art.
The exhibition presented Pearl's pieces alongside other First World War trench art objects and more recent works of art that reflected on war today, by artists including Ben Quilty, Olga Cironis, Nicholas Folland, and Aboriginal women artists from Tjanpi Desert Weavers.