Eight Bespoke Sculptures at Raffles, London: The OWO Corner Suites Commission

Eight bespoke sculptures, one for each corner suite of Raffles London at the Old War Office (OWO) - a building that has witnessed more of Britain's modern history than almost any other. When ARTIQ approached me about this commission at the beginning of the year, I was immediately thrilled that they wanted to explore my ‘recovering objects’ series of equine sculptures, reimagined. The suites look directly onto Horse Guards Parade and Whitehall, providing a rich opportunity to reinvent the heraldic context. This became an artistic exploration of material and colour, imbued with ideas around patriarchy, matriarchy, hard and soft power 

The brief from the very beginning wasn't just about placing beautiful objects in beautiful rooms. It was also a conversation between what heraldic symbols in statuary once meant and what they might mean now. Each sculpture comprises a brass horse, partly concealed beneath a coloured ceramic drape, set on a classical marble plinth. The drapes are solid yet appear soft. That ambiguity felt right for the building: the Old War Office was an historic place where surfaces concealed depths, where the official and the covert existed side by side for decades. 

ARTIQ's curation added another layer I found deeply compelling. The Corner Suites’ Art Collection was designed around the concept of and pertaining to the empowerment of female histories throughout wartime practice. The sculptures are placed alongside photographs of wartime heroines including Vera Atkins, Odette Sansom and Clementine Churchill – women whose contribution to the history made in that building had been largely invisible. The equine sculptures, reinterpreted, also sit in that context as a kind of question: what do we choose to make monumental, and what do we allow to disappear? 

Working alongside the curatorial team at ARTIQ and with the OWO Shareholders and Development Team has been an enriching experience in art commissioning in an historic context, where collaboration and delivering on time and to budget were also key.   

One of eight bespoke sculptural works for the corner suites at the Raffles, the Old War Office, London