Thanks for all the faves and nice comments! I really appreciate the support and welcome any constructive critique particularly from Stu , while I continue to grow and develop my skills as a landscape photographer.
Twelve intricately worked bronze chairs stand together on this ancient meadow. Each chair incorporates symbols and imagery representing concepts of law and key moments in the struggle for freedom, rule of law and equal rights. The Jurors is not a memorial, but rather an artwork that aims to examine the changing and ongoing significance and influences of Magna Carta. The jury system, a central feature of the British justice system and many others around the world, has its origins in Magna Carta.
The chairs seem to be awaiting a gathering, discussion or debate of some kind: an open invitation from the artist for the audience to sit, to reflect and, to discuss together the implications of the histories and issues depicted. The artwork was designed by Hew Locke to mark the th anniversary of the sealing of Magna Carta. Commissioned by Surrey County Council and National Trust, Hew Locke was selected for his track record of making extraordinary work and his proposal for an artwork that explores the international connections of this place and Magna Carta.
First drafted by the Archbishop of Canterbury to make peace between the unpopular King and a group of rebel barons, it promised the protection of church rights, protection for the barons from illegal imprisonment, access to swift justice, and limitations on feudal payments to the Crown, to be implemented through a council of 25 barons. After King John's death, the regency government of his young son, Henry III, reissued the document in , stripped of some of its more radical content, in an unsuccessful bid to build political support for their cause.
At the end of the war in , it formed part of the peace treaty agreed at Lambeth, where the document acquired the name Magna Carta, to distinguish it from the smaller Charter of the Forest which was issued at the same time. Short of funds, Henry reissued the charter again in in exchange for a grant of new taxes; his son, Edward I, repeated the exercise in , this time confirming it as part of England's statute law. King John met the rebel leaders at Runnymede, a water-meadow on the south bank of the River Thames, on 10 June Runnymede was a traditional place for assemblies, but it was also located on neutral ground between the royal fortress of Windsor Castle and the rebel base at Staines, and offered both sides the security of a rendezvous where they were unlikely to find themselves at a military disadvantage.
