Gillian Wearing OBE, SculptorMillicent Fawcett Statue

Millicent Fawcett’s statue is to commemorate women’s suffrage and in particular 100 years since women got the vote.

I wanted to also celebrate that it takes a movement as well as a strong individual to change things. So, around the plinth there is a frieze of photographic engraved granite tiles with images of those who were part of the wider Suffrage movement.

Millicent was a Suffragist and strongly believed in non-militant activism as opposed to the Suffragettes led by Emmeline Pankhurst who believed strongly in militancy. I had initially thought that those represented in the tiles would be Suffragists like Millicent was.

I drew up a list of names of women and men connected from both groups and then changed my mind to having just Suffragists like Millicent. I settled on a list of names but whilst away on a trip, I started to question my reasoning about it only being Suffragists.

The logic worked, but I was missing out on an opportunity to highlight the fact many different people were part of the fght for equality. And the Suffragettes in particular risked their lives for this. Luckily I still had a chance to change the names and with the help of Jo Baxendale from City Hall a meeting was set up with suffrage academics and historians so we could get a list of important Suffrage campaigners.

There are 55 women and 4 men and this means more women than men are now commemorated in Parliament Square.

It was in April 2017 that Millicent Fawcett was announced as the person to be represented in Parliament Square. As soon as I heard it was going to be Millicent, I immediately had the idea to have her hold a banner, saying: ‘Courage calls to courage everywhere.’

The words come from a text Millicent wrote a while after Emily Davison was killed by the Kings Horse at Epsom Derby. Emily sacrifced her life for the cause — Millicent’s quote both acknowledges this but also the message speaks to people on many levels, encouraging us to think of selfess acts of others and how we might be the same ourselves.

It also references my early 1990’s ‘signs’ series of photographs where people were asked to write anything they wanted on an A3 piece of paper.

I wasn’t sure what age Millicent should be portrayed in the sculpture so I called Caroline Criado-Perez, who was the person that successfully campaigned for the statue, to get her advice.

She said that she should be represented at the age she became leader of the NUWSS (the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies), which was 60 years old.

Of course this made total sense, as all the statues in Parliament Square were of middle or old aged – the moment that a person has a signifcant history and has achieved their goals. Even though Millicent started campaigning at 19, it took another six decades before the vote was granted to those over 30 years of age.

Most of the sculpture is machine made from a 3D printed cast. This is done by a photogrammetry studio where a person stands in the centre of the space whilst cameras circling around the fgure capture a pose from all angles.

Those images are composited and turned into a 3D image. For this I needed to have someone who had a similar build to Millicent in a traditional costume being photographed in the pose as if they were holding a banner. For the costume I employed award winning costume designer Deirdre Steer to design a walking suit based on one similar to Fawcett’s.

I wanted to incorporate an actual object of hers, to bring an authenticity to the sculpture. I looked at an old battered bag she owned at the LSE Library but that looked out of place.

Then Gillian Murphy from the LSE let me know about a brooch that belonged to the Fawcett

Society and their CEO Sam Smethers kindly brought it down to Pinewood studios to be 3D scanned.

3D Systems, who undertook the scanning and printing, composited the images and then printed out the scans and then it was sent to MDM Props to be assembled into one piece.

The shoes and head were sculpted, a banner was made and cast and fnally my own hands were cast. I chose my own hands as I am similar in age to that being depicted, she wore a similar wedding band ring to mine, plus as I was having her hold a sign again it shows the connection to my previous artwork and how I am interested in the voices of others. In fact, Millicent is the only sculpture in Parliament Square with a voice, all the other statues have names and no quotes.

The statue isn’t based on an image that existed of Millicent, it is one I wanted to portray of her and also to acknowledge activists and campaigners who come to Parliament Square with their banners to protest for change. In fact, since the statue has been unveiled many groups, particularly those fghting for women’s causes have met or stood around the statue to raise awareness of their individual causes.

The fnal part of the process before it was installed was the casting – this was done at AB Foundry. It was a really diffcult challenge as the detail on the skirt had to be retained when it was de-assembled and assembled in many parts. Joining the seams is called chasing and only very few people in this country can do such a fantastic job as those at AB, you cannot tell where the seams are.

It has been an honour to design this sculpture, and I was fortunate to have freedom to make all the creative choices on the work. It has been a fantastic response to the work, many people now quote Millicent’s “courage calls to courage everywhere” after seeing or hearing about the statue and seeing these words. For it to be that inspiring a piece of work I couldn’t have asked for more.