FIRST LOOK: Newcastle to get huge bronze statue of Queen Elizabeth II
It's thought to be the first commissioned in the UK since her death
A new statue of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has been commissioned as part of a town’s 850th anniversary celebrations.
Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council is commissioning the one-and-a-quarter times life size statue to be cast in bronze and placed in the Staffordshire town’s Queens Gardens.
The sculpture is being delivered by Staffordshire resident and famous sculptor Andy Edwards, whose popular works include The Beatles at Pier Head, Liverpool; Sir Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen and ‘All Together Now’ – an installation of opposing soldiers shaking hands over a football to symbolise one of the most famous events of the First World War.
The work will be funded by the sale at £8,500 apiece of 11 individually numbered maquettes, each 16 inches high and cast in the same bronze as the intended monument.
Simon Tagg, Leader of Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council, said: “We believe that this is one of the first statues, if not the first, of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to be commissioned since her death.
“The choice of the design is very deliberate: it draws from how her Majesty looked and what she was wearing on the 25th of May 1973 when she visited Newcastle-under-Lyme to celebrate our 800th anniversary, spoke to residents from the balcony of the old civic centre and then walked through the town centre, cheered by thousands in the sunshine.”
Andy said: “A theme of my work is that the statues are often installed at ground level and that people can interact with them.
“This statue will be different because of the very specific narrative of the detail, portraying her in 1973, but also because it casts the late Queen as an accessible figure and is a reflection of public admiration for her warmth and humanity, rather than as a remote figurehead.”
The statue, weighing one ton crt, will be positioned looking across Queens Gardens towards a statue of Queen Victoria, Queen Elizabeth II’s great-great-grandmother, which was unveiled by Grand Duke Michael of Russia in November 1903.
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