Editorial

• Published in: The sculpture journal Vol. 27; no. 1; pp. 3 - 4
• Main Authors: Dent, Peter, Wood, Jon
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Liverpool University Press 01.01.2018
• Subjects: Public art; Reparations; Sculpture; Wearing, Gillian; Women
• ISSN: 1366-2724; 1756-9923
• DOI: 10.3828/sj.2018.27.1.1

Calls for sculptural reparation typically demand the removal of statues, but this can also go the other way, with calls for installation. The recent unveiling of a statue of the suffragist Millicent Fawcett, commissioned from the artist Gillian Wearing, is the positive outcome of a campaign that was launched by the journalist and activist Caroline Criado Perez after she noticed that all eleven effigies on pedestals in Parliament Square were of men. It is sadly a commonplace that much public sculpture goes unnoticed, and statues on pedestals can sometimes receive little attention from the public who pass them by on the street, but this was not the case here. Criado Perez has a track record of looking at the overlooked and noticing the ideological messages that lie hidden in plain sight. She had previously led the successful campaign to make sure that significant women continued to be represented on notes issued by the Bank of England. Sculpture has been called upon to play its ancient role of embodying exemplary figures in public spaces, and in keeping with this function the idea was to install the piece on the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918.