Exhibition
Steve McQueen: Queen and Country - National Portrait Gallery
McQueen's cabinet containing sheets of facsimile postage stamps, each one dedicated to a deceased soldier.
The UK-wide tour of Turner Prize winner, McQueen's postal proposal, 'Queen and Country', begins its final leg at the National Portrait Gallery just as we pass the seventh anniversary of the Allied invasion of Iraq and approach a year since our wholesale withdrawal of troops from Basra. The Royal Mail's ongoing refusal to publish this series of portraits - newly expanded to include 160 soldiers from the final death toll of 179 - means that the exhibition gains fresh urgency and represents something of a last-ditch opportunity for the campaign to have the stamps sanctioned for public use.
In the meantime, the faces, names, regiments, birth and death dates of the fallen remain in their oak display cabinet - an apt but ominous metaphor for casualties of war which the Government already seems only too willing to close the file on. McQueen preserves the hope that his stamps will see the light of day, despite Royal Mail's reluctance to either publicly back down or offer their reasons for rebuffing him: it's too soon, they say, or, the bereaved families aren't supportive and wouldn't like their sons or daughters being defaced by Post Offices. All of which sounds like an attempt to bury bad news and deny the distribution of these potent, daily reminders of the realities of an unjust war. But all will not be lost if 'Queen and Country' doesn't make the transition into print and stays in its box: it's still a tautly critical piece of concept art and can't then be accused of becoming officialdom's sticking plaster for its misdeeds in Iraq.
