Happy Halloween Season! 🎃
On your way into the gardens, you may have noticed Tamsyn Challenger‘s Ducking Stool, a protest sculpture created after the arrest of the dissident punk rock and performance art group Pussy Riot. Read more here.
But did you know, a ducking stool was once a medieval device used in cases of witchcraft, seen as a fool proof way to establish whether a suspect was a witch 🧙♀️
“I think the ducking stool is an extraordinary way of silencing a woman – and it’s not really that long ago in our human history that such things happened. But I find that women are ducked still, constantly”, says Tamsyn.
We have two maquettes by Tamsyn available to view and purchase online. The first, Ducking Stool, is a miniature copy of the sculpture sited in the gardens. Secondly, the Ukraine Ducking Stool, is instead coloured in blue and yellow as a sign of solitary with the people of Ukraine and a portion of profits from each Ukraine Ducking Stool will be donated to Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC), one of Tremenheere’s partnered charities in 2022.
You can view them, along with the rest of the artwork seen in the gallery this year online here.