F E AT U R E
Statues Redressed Last summer, Sky Arts and Liverpool Council invited a group of artists and designers to dress statues across the city to challenge, celebrate and debate the role of monuments. Some statues were dressed for a day and some a month – just a moment in the long life of a statue. Photography by David Edwards. by Paul Lincoln Chosen because of its rich history, Liverpool has the highest number of statues in the UK outside of London, including cultural icons like The Beatles through to sporting heroes, royalty, and monuments depicting people linked to slavery and Britain’s colonial past. Some of the artists’ interventions ranged from the celebratory to the confrontational. The project addressed many of the city’s statues, from Peter Pan in Sefton Park to the Queen Victoria memorial in Derby Square. Landscape architects frequently create meanwhile spaces, and Statues Redressed takes a similar approach by playing with existing infrastructures and challenging the viewer to see an object through new eyes. In the Sky Arts documentary, former director of the British Museum Neil McGregor notes, “Liverpool is a city that has had to think about what it is.” He sees this project as a new way to engage citizens in a conversation about the city. A number of the statues and their redressing make specific reference to Liverpool’s colonial past and its engagement with the slave trade. 48
These include the statue of William Huskisson which, long before the toppling of Colston in Bristol Harbour, was displaced during the 1981 Toxteth Riots. The artist responds to an empty plinth by creating a recording of one of the witnesses to the event. The response to the Queen Victoria monument has been created by fashion designer Karen Arthur and historian Laurence Westgaph, historian-in-residence at National Museums Liverpool. The statue of Disraeli is redressed by Daniel Lismore. His work acknowledges Disraeli’s role in the declaration of Victoria as Empress of India and makes a number of observations on the history of gay rights over this period. And a group of three statues, including Christopher Columbus, ‘the maker of Liverpool’, are provided with ruffs in an examination of the power, wealth, and control that they exercised. For McGregor, the redressing of these statues raises important questions about how we want to occupy our public spaces. He also reminds us that in most cases, although an important part of the public realm, statues are ignored, pointedly noting that “every statue finds its pigeon.”
Every statue finds its pigeon
Disraeli, St Georges Hall, Charles Bell Birch, 1883, Redressed by Daniel Lismore © David Edwards
