Motherland

[installation and photographs, 2008, height 1.52 m/5 ft, width variable]

This installation of life-size silhouettes relates to Queen Victoria’s nine pregnancies, her iconic figure as the Head of the British Empire and England being the colonial Mother Land. The wooden silhouettes were free standing, anchored onto the ground of the original footprints of the Great Exhibition of 1851, in Hyde Park. They looked very different against the backdrop of the Italian Terraces when the exhibition was transported to Sydenham, in Crystal Palace Park, as part of the Victorian Weekend.