Susan Hiller's 'Monument' currently on view in the Duveen Gallery at Tate Britain

3 April 2023

Susan Hiller’s Monument (1980-81) is currently installed in the Duveen Gallery at the Tate Britain in London.

The installation comprises forty-one photographs of memorial plaques the artist came across in Postman’s Park, near St Paul’s Cathedral, London. There is one photograph for each year of the artist’s life (at the time the work was made). Each plaque commemorates an ordinary man, woman or child who died while performing an act of heroism. One memorial reads, for example: ‘Elizabeth Boxall/Aged 17 of Bethnal Green/ Who Died of Injuries Received/In Trying to Save/ A Child/From a Runaway Horse/June 20 1888’. The photographs are arranged in a diamond shape on the gallery wall, in front of which is set a park bench. The bench faces away from the wall and a cassette player and headphones rest on its seat. Hiller’s own voice plays through the headphones and her flowing and associative commentary addresses the nature of heroism as well as the themes of death, memory and representation.

Find further information via Tate.

Image © Estate of Susan Hiller, courtesy Tate.