Marcia Bennet-Male–the UK’s only Black female stonemason–has created a memorial statue of Mary Woolaston. The Mary Woolaston memorial is one of only a handful of permanent statues of Black women in London, and is a welcome celebration of the inclusive shared history of the city.
The Mary Woolaston memorial sculpture will be revealed on Saturday 28th June at Calthorpe Community Gardens during the Black Mary’s Pleasure Garden Festival. Stonemason Marcia Bennet-Male created the statue and award-winning multidisciplinary artist Gaylene Gould conceived the concept for the community-focussed festival.
Marcia Bennett-Male is the UK’s only Black female sculptor. The London-born and based artist has worked with The Royal Academy, The British Museum, Dulwich Picture Gallery, and more. She has shown her work all over the world. Gaylene Gould is an award-winning fiction writer and broadcaster whose work unearths buried stories that exist in the margins. Gould’s has been commissioned by many prestigious institutions including the Tate, V&A, Clore Leadership, Durham University, Moderna Museet Sweden and BAM.
From 1987, when I first picked up a mallet and chisel, the Black Mary statue was mine. I am 60 now, and I am exactly where I should be. Despite everything, I am still here, and thrilled to have been introduced to Mary. We’re friends.”
Marcia Bennett-Male
No longer resigned to the forgotten corners of history, the new sculpture of Woolaston– a Black woman Well Keeper who is said to have lived in the King’s Cross area of London, where she kept a healing well. Marcia Bennet-Male’s new statue of Woolaston formally commits her story to public memory and will be celebrated during the Black Mary’s Pleasure Garden Festival, a one-day celebration conceived by Gayle Gould and inspired by the legend of Mary Woolsaton. The new statue of Woolaston is designed to inspire public and community healing while emphasising how our shared humanity can overcome separation and division.
Gould’s community day of celebration at Calthorpe Community Gardens draws on the story of Woolaston and the global healing stories of London’s Wells. The celebration is designed to revive the spirit of the healing well for London through ritual, immersive artistic experiences, and celebratory connection, amplifying the ways wellness is as relevant to 21st-century Londoners as it was to their 17th-century counterparts.
Find out more about the Black Mary’s Pleasure Garden Festival here.
