The statue of Newnham’s co-founder Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847–1929) was created by Turner Prize-winning artist, Gillian Wearing (b.1963). The full-size statue stands in Parliament Square, following a campaign by the journalist Caroline Criado Perez. The campaign highlighted that fewer than 3% of statues in the UK are of women, other than those of members of the royal family.
The statue was commissioned to recognise the centenary of the Representation of the People Act 1918 which gave some women the right to vote. It portrays Millicent at the age of 50, when she became President of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. The names and images of 55 women and four men who supported women’s suffrage also appear on the statue’s plinth.
In describing the banner that appears in the statue, Wearing explained ‘The words ‘courage calls to courage everywhere’ are shortened from a sentence that Millicent wrote a few years after the death of Emily Davison who was struck by the King’s horse at Epsom Derby. Millicent believed in non-militant action and Emily, who was a Suffragette, believed in the opposite. The Suffragettes were part of a movement born out of the frustration that, even after decades of protests and petitions, women were still not being listened to. They believed that the only way forward was to create civil disobedience. By using this quote from Millicent, I am bringing the two groups together symbolically’.
The banner also references Wearing’s early 1990s work Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say And Not Signs That Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say in which she took a series of photographs of strangers holding up their personal thoughts on pieces of white card.
The maquette at Newnham is one of a small edition with a design based on the original sculpture, and using materials informed by the full-size work. The maquette was acquired in 2018 and is shown in the Millicent Garrett Fawcett room. Also displayed nearby are the tiles depicting supporters of women’s suffrage (on loan from the GLA), that were created as sample pieces by the artist in the preparations for the sculpture as well as a poster from the Wearing’s Signs That Say series, purchased as part of the 2020Solidarity fundraiser.