Workforce (a work in progress)
2014 I was invited to be the first artist-in-residence in the National Maritime Museum’s RE.THINK studio prior to the gallery of the same name opening in 2013. The brief was to investigate museums, art and empire in relation to Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle by Yinka Shonibare MBE, newly installed in the museum grounds. As resident artist, I worked alongside the design, learning, interpretation and curatorial teams developing the gallery, and devised a public project while also working on a new commission.
Focusing on the construction and ‘career’ of HMS Victory, I closely researched the components needed to build the ship. This led to questions about who contributed to its construction, and who was included or excluded in the process of recording its history. I developed a collective making concept to honour the people who have ‘fallen through the floorboards of history’, inviting both staff and public to make a wax nail or fastening based on those retrieved from HMS Victory by conservators, and then asking each maker to sign their name on a ‘nail smiths’ list. My intention – all those who made wax nails to represent un-named individuals who built the British Empire, an innumerable, global, unrecorded workforce whose contribution was intentionally ignored.
The completed commission, Workforce (a work in progress), is a collection of 21 cast glass, replica nails and fastenings encased by the nail smiths’ signatures printed onto the outer surface of the sheet glass case. This piece is work in progress towards an idea for a future, freestanding, public artwork: Workforce (in memoriam), a glass case filled with thousands of cast glass nails and fastenings made from the existing wax models and those produced by newly invited members of the public.
Copyright © Maria Amidu, 2014