Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere

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Essential reading for anyone interested in the history of the British women’s suffrage movement and Millicent Garrett Fawcett’s enduring legacy.' You have also put photographic etchings of other suffrage campaigners—including the Pankhursts—around the plinth. What was the motivation for this? Many people have argued that they found this work too simplistic, but for me, someone who often initially has trouble navigating a more complex and sophisticated dialect, I appreciated how this was written at a level that most people would find easier to relate to. Often, issues such as feminism are seen as intellectual and scholarly, but that simply isn't, and shouldn't be, the case. Anyone, and everyone, can be a feminist, so why should people be excluded from the conversation in fear of looking 'dumb'? Caroline advised me on this, as we see very few bronze statues of middle aged women. Also all the statues in Parliament Square are of men who were captured at moments they were important. That is from middle to old age. Winston Churchill's sculpture was derided by some when it was unveiled as it showed a frail old man. But now we accept it as a symbol of him. And I feel the same with this sculpture. What is important is the achievements of Fawcett and the moment she was at her most influential, which was when she became president of the NUWSS in 1907 at 60 years old, having been a member for ten years.

Gillian Wearing (b. 1963, Birmingham) currently lives and works in London. Solo exhibitions include: Life, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati (2018); Family Stories, The National Gallery of Denmark, Copenhagen, (2017); Behind the mask, another mask: Gillian Wearing and Claude Cahun, National Portrait Gallery, London (2017); Sandra and Gerald Fineberg Art Wall, ICA Boston (2016); Instituto Valenciano de Arte Moderno, IVAM, Valencia (2015); A Real Birmingham Family, Centenary Square, Library of Birmingham. Birmingham (2014); We Are Here, The New Art Gallery Walsall, (2013); Gillian Wearing, Whitechapel Gallery and Ridinghouse, London and touring to K20, Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Dusseldorf and Pinakothek der Moderne, Museum Brandhorst, Munich (2012); A Real Birmingham Family, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (2011); Confessions: Portraits, vidéos, Musée Rodin, Paris (2009); Living Proof, ACCA, Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2006); Mass Observation, Merrell, London / New York and Museum Of Contemporary Art Chicago, Chicago (2002); A Trilogy, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver (2002); Broad Street, Gillian Wearing, Museu do Chiado, Lisbon (2001); Gillian Wearing – Sous in uence, Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris (2001); Gillian Wearing, Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea (CGAC) and Fundación la Caixa, Barcelona and Santiago de Compostela (2001); Unspoken, Kunstverein München, Munich (2001); and Gillian Wearing, Serpentine Gallery, London (2000). thought this didn’t go far enough. So Suffragettes started getting arrested for minor law breaking, doing things like

The bronze statue portrays Dame Millicent at the age of 50, when she became president of the National Union of Women's Suffrage Societies (NUWSS). [2] The figure holds a banner reading COURAGE/ CALLS TO/ COURAGE/ EVERYWHERE, an extract from a speech Fawcett gave in 1920. She wears a walking suit, [3] typical attire of that period featuring an overcoat and a long dress. [4] The artist integrated the pattern and texture of the tweed fabric into the bronze of the suit. [3] The Fawcett Society lent a piece of Fawcett's jewellery to Wearing, who scanned the brooch and incorporated it into the statue's design. [5]

Winterson published Courage in the 100 th anniversary year since the passing of the Representation of the People Act which provided some women the right to vote. She describes the challenges to, and eventual victory of, the Suffragettes as their activities became progressively militant in response to the wall of contempt put up by men around them. Her discussion of decades more of struggle up to the present holds all the more relevance following in the wake of the #MeToo movement. Winterson closes this wee firebrand with Emeline Pankhurst’s 1913 speech, ‘Freedom or Death’, delivered when she sailed to America between prison sentences. She had been released long enough to recover her strength from a hunger strike and was reincarcerated under the terms of the Cat and Mouse Act upon her return to England. Beverley Cook, curator of the suffragette collection at the Museum of London, said she thinks it is fashionable for contemporary feminists to reclaim the words of the “votes for women” campaigners for their own ends. “Sometimes the words of the suffragists and suffragettes are taken out of context and given a contemporary reinterpretation.” Courage calls to courage everywhere’ is the best-known phrase associated with Millicent Garrett Fawcett (1847-1929), the leading UK suffragist and campaigner of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But what is the source of her quote, and what is its context?This book is simple to read, and very much to the point, but for some, this may not satisfy their thirst for knowledge, especially in regards to the Suffragette movement, so in that case, one just needs to delve deeper, which is what I will do after writing this review.

Diminutive in scale, Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere by Gillian Wearing, is a bronze maquette (small working model) for a larger sculpture of the suffragist and feminist leader, Millicent Fawcett, that was commissioned in 2017 for Parliament Square. In Fawcett’s hands is a banner with the words ‘Courage Calls to Courage Everywhere’ referencing words she wrote in 1913 after the death of Emily Wilding Davison, the British Suffragette who fought for equal voting rights for women. In 2018, Wearing commented on the subject of her sculpture: Winterson writes with a marvellous voice, as if chatting with you across the table. Her sense of humour and passion come through in her cadence and repetition of phrases. She uses cool logic and and speaks with equipoise regarding both sexes, which gives her writing authority, observing, ‘and we do need parity, because women are one half of the population’:stars for a Jeanette Winterson book... I still can't believe it! She's one of my favorite writers (among the top 3, I mean, maybe even top 1) But I had high expectations for this little nonfiction book and I was a bit disappointed. I thought it was beautifully written, as is usual with her, but I found it a bit superficial, basic and slightly tone down for my taste, which was a surprise as I was expecting something really revolutionary and full of spite for anyone with a Y chromosome. I mean, this is Jeanette Winterson whom we're talking about and she's never hidden her thoughts about such gender... and I love her wholeheartedly because of it.