Exhibition: Immortalised

From statues and street names, to shrines and temporary artworks, Immortalised explores the variety of ways people and events have been commemorated in England, past and present.

Stories of immortalisation, from the heroic and sad, to the quirky, inspirational and challenging, are told through photographs, archival material and individual objects presented in an immersive environment that gives life and voice to the monuments and memorials on show.

From Gareth Southgate to Millicent Fawcett

In this exhibition, visitors will be able to explore the sometimes unusual ways we immortalise national characters. Among the objects on display will be the Gareth Southgate sign recently used to temporarily rename Southgate tube station in honour of the England manager, who this year helped England to their first World Cup semi-finals in 28 years.

Also on display will be a tiny coffin made for a strand of Admiral Lord Nelson’s hair. This unusual piece was made by Jane Wildgoose, an academic who creates installations about death and remembrance.

Elsewhere in the exhibition is the UK AIDS Memorial Quilt which tells the stories of nearly 400 lives lost in the early days of the HIV AIDS epidemic in the 80s and 90s. This irreplaceable historical document, several square metres in size, was lovingly made by the friends, lovers or family of people who died in the epidemic.

Further through the exhibition, visitors will be able to explore the well-documented underrepresentation of women and people of colour in our memorial landscape and the ways various groups are addressing this imbalance. The maquette of the recently-unveiled statue of Millicent Fawcett, the first of a woman to be erected in Parliament Square, will be among the objects on display. Created by the artist Gillian Wearing, the figure of Fawcett holds a sign that reads “Courage calls to courage everywhere”, taken from a speech she gave after the death of fellow campaigner Emily Wilding Davison at the 1913 Epsom Derby.

Also on display will be the maquette of a proposed slavery memorial in London’s Hyde Park, designed by Australian sculptor Les Johnson, to remember enslaved Africans and their descendants. Although there are statues of white abolitionists in England, there are no national memorials to the people who suffered the horrors of being enslaved. The group behind the idea, Memorial 2007, have been campaigning for years to have this monument created within a landscaped garden which would become an oasis for remembrance, reflection and education.