Go figure

The Fawcett statue is also unusual because it was created by Gillian Wear- ing, a contemporary artist, when commissions such as this usually fall to a tight-knit group of specialists. And although it might commemorate one suffragist, more than 50 other influential figures are represented on plaques that surround the plinth.

“Gillian’s proposal spoke to heritage, but also brought her contemporary perspective, especially as Millicent’s banner alludes to Gillian’s work from the 1990s, where she photographed ordinary people holding signs,” Simons says.

Many people hope this monument will prompt further efforts to correct the low number of women represented in the UK’s statuary. The number of non-royal, historic women is less than 3%, according to the cam- paigner Caroline Criado-Perez, who started the petition to get the statue of Fawcett into Parliament Square. The percentage will inch upwards when a new statue of Emmeline Pankhurst is unveiled in Manchester, following an overwhelming public vote, on 14 December.

The issue with these two statues is that they have come too late, but there have been far more contentious arguments surrounding monuments that represent oppressive histories and the legacy of colonialism. They are part of a wider debate happening in the US, where protests and counter-protests surrounding the removal of confederate monuments installed as late as the 1960s have spread rapidly, leading to violence and even death, in the case of Charlottesville, Virginia.

A 32-year-old woman was killed when a car rammed into a group of people at a white supremacist rally in the city, held to protest against the removal of a statue of the confederate general Robert E Lee from a public park.

In the UK, the call to remove a statue of the Victorian imperialist and British supremacist Cecil Rhodes from outside Oriel College in Oxford in 2016 was heard, but not heeded, following the Rhodes Must Fall campaign in Cape Town, South Africa, the previous year.

In Bristol, a variety of protests have high- lighted Edward Colston’s position as a slave trader, including a red ball and chain affixed to the statue’s feet and vandalism with white paint. The historian and broadcaster David Olusoga is among those who has raised the issue and encouraged the city to confront its past.

“The city is getting to a point where it is beginning to acknowledge that legacy on the street, including the new double plaque designed for the Colston statue, which will explain his role in slavery and his con- tribution to the city,” says Laura Pye, the director of National Museums Liverpool, who recently moved from her position as the head of culture for Bristol City Council.

White-washing history

Pye was involved in the decision to rename Colston Hall, a Bristol performance venue that will reopen in 2020 with a new name after its refurbishment.

“I support the reasons for renaming,” she says. “It can’t be a space where people feel unwelcome simply due to the name, and that is currently the case. When it becomes a barrier to engagement you should change it. The team intend to do a lot of work around interpreting the hall’s heritage and who Colston was, too. It is part of the venue’s history and they are not hiding from that.”

In Liverpool, tours explaining the city’s roots in slavery are common. It also has the International Slavery Museum, where a dedicated gallery explains the significance of street signs and names. But Pye is the first to admit that a museum context can only go so far.

“There is an argument for taking these monuments down and putting them in museums, but interpreting both sides of those histories in situ can be valuable,” she says. “We have to be honest about it. Right now, if you walked down Bold Street – named after a slave trader – you won’t find any information about who he was or what he did. If we want to reach a wider audience, we need to engage with it right there.”

For Subhadra Das, the curator of UCL Collections at UCL Culture, part of University College London, there is a distinction between statues and building names. “Statues are only commemorative,” Das says. “All you are doing is celebrating that person, but there is more nuance and room for discussion with a building’s name.”

This idea formed the basis of Bricks + Mortals, a site-specific exhibition and podcast series that tells the history of eugenics at UCL.

“For me it was a story that had fallen into the gaps,” Das says. “I don’t have a museum space and you can’t guarantee that people will come into one either, so I turned campus buildings into exhibits.”

By adding brief text on venues that commemorate the likes of the archaeologist William Flinders Petrie, the mathematician Karl Pearson and the anthropologist Francis Galton, Das was able to talk about the British empire, eugenics and the fact that it is a racist science, and focus on the stories of those who contributed to it. Das also believes that this kind of intervention can be more valuable than simply renaming spaces, as it brings about important discussions around these difficult histories.

“By getting rid of names we are white- washing that history,” she says. “In the absence of any meaningful conversation about the history of racism and eugenics at UCL, you’re just brushing it under the carpet. These names are signposts to deeper issues in the university and society.”

A new commission by the Royal Statistical Society, London, has also appeared near the UCL campus in another effort to tell new stories. This is in the form of a plaque dedicated to the statistician, anti-slavery cam- paigner and founding UCL member Zachary Macaulay.

Historical tributes are, of course, only one part of a wider debate. Contemporary com- missions play an important part in redressing the balance.

Banu Cennetolu’s The List, a monument to refugees who died while attempting to reach Europe, was vandalised and ripped down in Liverpool earlier this year. Both the artist and the Liverpool Biennial, which commissioned the piece, decided to leave the remnants as a reminder of the community’s polarised views.

“Leaving it in its current state says a lot about the point of the piece in the first place, to highlight the systematic violence exer- cised against refugees,” says Pye. “Although I in no way condone what happened, and despair at the fact that there are people who even consider that sort of vandalism, it did spark a national debate.”

Challenging the status quo

Jonathan Watkins, the director of Ikon gallery in Birmingham, points to the criticism of another public statue by Gillian Wearing. The artist ran an open-call process to find the subject of A Real Birmingham Family, which portrays the Joneses: two sisters who are the heads of single-parent households with their children. The sculpture was unveiled in 2014.

“All kind of stereotypes were projected on to them,” says Watkins. “First, the idea that they were a lesbian couple, which was not the case, and, second, because they were single mums and mixed race that they were on benefits, which wasn’t true either.”

Fathers 4 Justice decried the absence of men and defaced the sculpture, but the monument has also evoked positive responses.

“It was a lightning rod for all kinds of issues and it became a focal point for positive demonstrations – one against domestic abuse, another for homelessness,” says Watkins. “Blankets were placed at the base of the sculpture, with the message to homeless people to take them if they needed them.”

It seems that, unlike the other statues in the surrounding area that feel alienating, Wearing’s contribution to Birmingham’s Centenary Square signified something else entirely. Another new commission by Ikon, expected in 2019, will see the artist Hew Locke furthering his investigations into British imperialism by dressing Birmingham’s statue of Queen Victoria as a “voodoo queen”, which is sure to raise eyebrows.

Presenting a counterpart to our largely homogenous collection of historic public statues has also been a primary objective of the Fourth Plinth, the ongoing contemporary art programme that fills the vacant spot in London’s Trafalgar Square with international commissions. For more than 10 years it has presented a challenging array of works that “turns everyone into an art critic, whether they’re a cab driver or a school kid”, according to Simons, who over- sees the initiative.

Examples include a blue cockerel by Katharina Fritsch, which poked fun at the pomp seen elsewhere in the square, Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship In a Bottle, which examines colonialism from multiple viewpoints, and the current commission, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist by Michael Rakowitz.

His sculpture depicts an ancient Assyrian “lamassu” statue, which has been destroyed by Islamic State. But instead of being carved from stone, it is formed from 10,000 Iraqi date-syrup cans, which refer- ence the country’s heritage and subsequent economic destruction by conflict, as well as the UK’s involvement in the war.

“There are a lot of historic squares in cities around the world where you would not be able to do something so bold that might be seen to critique the environment, commenting on heritage, politics and history,” says Simons. “I’m proud we are able to make that statement.”