please empty your brain below
I think Megan should be praised for her efforts; hopefully it will spark some artistic interest in people.

There was also very briefly Marc Quinn's Surge of Power statue in Bristol, but that didn't last very long in situ.

Ian | 06.08.20 - 7:39 a.m. | #

Depending on what you count as a statue, there is also for example one of Nicola Adams and a second one of Mary Seacole.

One of the three Platform Pieces in Brixton is modelled on a black woman, Joy Battick.

(But yes there are far too many statues of white men, and far too few of women and of people of other ethnicities.)

Andrew | 06.08.20 - 7:57 a.m. | #

It's going to be a day of virtue signalling here in the comments.

Surbitonian | 06.08.20 - 8:56 a.m. | #

Another link to the Brixton Station statues here.

mike | 06.08.20 - 9:20 a.m. | #

Seeing that most statues are of famous (in their time) dead (indeed long dead) people, it's hardly surprising they don't reflect the CURRENT population mix.

Indeed I imagine the number of working class people portrayed in London statues to be very low too.

Mikey C | 06.08.20 - 9:37 a.m. | #

I like the shopping trolleys.

Leuconoe | 06.08.20 - 10:21 a.m. | #

I am probably not the only person whose first thought when seeing that the artist responsible for the slice of ship near the Dome was Richard Wilson was 'I don't believe it'.

Ian Paton | 06.08.20 - 11:14 a.m. | #

Thank you for enlightening me about the upside down pylon at North Greenwich. It's the only one I've seen, and from the Thames side, I don't recall seeing any explanation of what it was (nor indeed that it was part of a wider project).

Man of Kent | 06.08.20 - 12:44 p.m. | #

I'm not over-keen on some of the North Greenwich ones. For some reason I feel a bit cheated that the pylon isn't a bit of real pylon but something made from scratch, and coming on the slice of ship unawares I got quite excited from a distance thinking I'd found a ship moored at a quay only to be brought down to earth finding a neglected bit of metal.

If you don't mind skipping the cable Car/Royal Victoria bit, the secret ferry from North Greenwich to Trinity Buoy Wharf is an interesting alternative, though I can't work out if it's running at the moment.

Andrew S | 06.08.20 - 2:29 p.m. | #

Dunno about fingery, I thought it was a bit leggy/bottomy.

Sarah | 06.08.20 - 4:32 p.m. | #

I wish that the "Here" signpost had the figure 39,774 instead.

Tim W | 06.08.20 - 4:36 p.m. | #

Sorry I'm late to comment - and I see that others have mentioned it twice already - but in my opinion by far the most famous one is at Brixton station, unless I'm missing something.

DavidC | 06.08.20 - 7:54 p.m. | #

Mary Seacole, a modern myth based on a real person. Documents of the time tell a different story and modern spin has turned her into a legend. Hope you do not mind my putting this link here.

EC | 06.08.20 - 8:36 p.m. | #

Lynn McDonald has been heavily critical for many years of the attention paid to Mary Seacole (and by implication not paid to her preferred heroine: she was a founder of the Nightingale Society). For example, "Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole: Nursing's Bitter Rivalry" published in History Today in 2012. Certainly, Nightingale was much more important in establishing nursing as a profession, and encouraging proper sanitation and statistical analysis in a medical context, but it should be possible to praise the contributions of both women without having to elevate one and ignore the other.

If you think statues are important, there are plenty of other black women who could be commemorated if we wanted to: for example, the poet Phillis Wheatley, or Mary Prince who wrote an autobiography of her life as a slave, or more recently Claudia Jones whose 1959 "Caribbean Carnival" was a forerunner to the Notting Hill Carnival.

Andrew | 07.08.20 - 2:22 p.m. | #

>>There are apparently only three statues of a black woman in the UK.

Well, that's wrong for starters. In Edinburgh, on Lothian Road, there's a statue of a black African woman and child (http://www.eyeonedinburgh.net/monuments/old-town/woman-child)

Perhaps the person who came up with this confused "England" for "UK" (all too common) or perhaps didn't do any research at all (equally likely).

Agent X | 07.08.20 - 8:15 p.m. | #

DG - Have you ever covered the monument to the 1901 accident also found on Three Mills Green? I stumbled across it the other day - nice statue - and then Googled the horrific story behind it.

Rob | 07.08.20 - 11:15 p.m. | #

Excuse my ignorance, but how can I tell that Sculpture Number 3 is a black woman?
It's obviously black material (stone or metal, I can't tell). Plenty of white-skinned women dress like that and have their hair in a top-knot.
What have I missed?

dg writes: The artist says she's a black woman.

Notts Observer | 08.08.20 - 1:15 p.m. | #











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