Statue of Queen Victoria

     Commissioned in 1887 to mark the Golden Jubilee, this statue was unveiled in 1894 outside the law courts in Georgetown, Guyana. More than half a century later, in 1954, the statue was dynamited in an act of anti-colonial protest, and its head and left hand were blown off. The attack came in the wake of repressive measures taken by the Colonial Office when the People ’s Progressive Party (PPP) of Guyana won elections in 1953. Guyana achieved independence in 1966 and became a “Co-operative Republic” in 1970. To mark the formation of the republic, the statue of Victoria was removed to Georgetown’s botanical gardens. However, in 1990, the statue was restored and re-erected in front of the Supreme Court of Judicature in Georgetown. The British artist Hew Locke, who was raised in Guyana, recalls the “shock” when the statue was returned to its original location. Locke’s large painted photograph of the statue, which he describes as “mindful vandalism,” recalls attacks on statuary; however, rather than destruction, Locke is concerned with transformation.