The arts
Shaping history: Rowan Gillespie’s statues

Internationally renowned Irish sculptor Rowan Gillespie is one the great figurative sculptors in Irish art and has been described as “one of the most eloquent contemporary masters of Irish sculpture”.

Gillespie is noted for his Famine sculptures on Custom House Quay, Dublin (1997), the first in a famine trilogy that continues with Migrants on Éireann Quay, Ireland Park, Toronto (2007), and Footsteps towards Freedom, the female convict statues on Hobart’s waterfront (2017).

Gillespie uses the painstaking lost-wax casting method to create each of his major projects, working alone from conception to completion. Each figure he creates is carefully considered and arises from an exhaustive body of research. Historical authenticity is fundamental to his work.

In all, Gillespie has created eight high-quality bronze statues for Tasmania: four as part of the Footsteps towards Freedom project (2015-2017) and another four for From the Shadows (2018-2021). The extraordinary lives of convict women and orphan school children, many of whom were the children of convicts, have been acknowledged in these two significant sculpture projects. Both projects have received widespread community, business and government support.

Rowan Gillespie statue, Degraves Street, South Hobart, photo Jody Steele.

Between 1803 and 1853, almost 13,000 convict women, together with more than 2,000 of their free children, arrived in Van Diemen’s Land. On arrival, the women were sent to the Cascades Female Factory or a similar penal institution, and those children who were weaned were sent to the bleak and miserable orphan schools at New Town, about 7km from Hobart Town. In all, nearly 6,000 children were admitted to the orphan schools from 1828 to 1879.

While many of these women left conditions of great poverty and, in Ireland, famine, on arrival they found themselves in an inhumane system where they were treated as little more than a commodity. Not only was their labour crucial to the fledgling colony, but they were considered breeding stock.

Footsteps towards Freedom was the initiative of John Kelly, who was moved and inspired by Gillespie’s Famine sculptures in Dublin. In 2015, Kelly recruited a small project team to bring to fruition his vision. The project team commissioned Gillespie to create four statues to commemorate all those convict women transported to Van Diemen’s Land and to acknowledge that many brought children with them.

Gillespie visited Tasmania to better understand the story of the convict women. “I went with one absolute obsession from the start … to retrace the footsteps of the women from Hunter Island where they came ashore and walk in their footsteps up to the Cascades Female Factory,” he said. He was disturbed by the thought of what the women faced on arrival at the factory and this is echoed in his emotional and empathic response to the Footsteps statues and the convict women they represent.

The Famine statues at Custom House Quay, Dublin, photo Dianne Snowden.

He voiced what he believed to be the feelings of the convict women when they arrived, “I feel so scared. I feel so alone. I feel nobody loves me. Isn’t that what they would have thought? Isn’t that the feeling you would have had?”

The statues were installed at the Hobart waterfront on the MACq 01 Hotel forecourt in Hunter Street, close to where the convict women and their children disembarked after a lengthy sea voyage.

On October 14, 2017, thousands gathered to witness His Excellency Michael D. Higgins, President of Ireland, and Her Excellency Professor the Honourable Kate Warner AC, Governor of Tasmania, unveil the four Footsteps statues. For the first time in Tasmania, the history of individual convict women and their children became visible and tangible. The statues have proved a catalyst to exploring the stories of convict women, for locals and visitors alike.

At the unveiling, Governor Warner, referred to the “remarkable fact that these bronze sculptures are modelled from living descendants of convict women who stepped ashore here”. This, she said, “reinforces for us all the reality that, while the lives of those women were often wretched, they were also in many respects the founding mothers of today’s Tasmania”.

President Higgins also reflected on the broader meanings of Rowan Gillespie’s powerful art. “These sculptures, let us remind ourselves, also make common cause with the suffering of migrants in our times. They should remind us that the trauma of displacement and forced exile are not experiences confined to our past but are the lived experience of millions around the world today, including many who now call Australia home,” he said.

Irish President Michael D Higgins in Hobart in 2017, courtesy of Footsteps towards Freedom.

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Rowan Gillespie’s works are not only symbolic representations of people from the past but provide a channel for storytelling. Each statue has its own story. In an interview for the Moondance Productions documentary, Shaping History, Gillespie referred to the time warp where he sculpts the descendant of today as if she were the convict woman of the past.

Gillespie was drawn to the story of the convict women of Van Diemen’s Land and particularly the Irish women. “Certainly with all the work I’ve done around the famine through the years, I had no inkling … that the [Irish] convict women all went from Dún Laoghaire Harbour right near where I live … that really fascinated me because it was bringing me right from my doorstep over to Hobart. I just thought, well, this would be a brilliant project to get involved in.”

He sees the convict women as survivors. “These women to me were all good women. They did what they needed to do to survive. Maybe I am wrong about that, but I think they were just survivors. These women are the womb of Australia.”

The story of the convict women led Gillespie to another story: that of the orphan school children.

Orphan Schools, New Town, courtesy Tasmanian Archives.

Founded in 2018, From the Shadows follows on from the hugely successful Footsteps towards Freedom project. It is based on the idea that for too long the lives of convict women and orphan school children have been hidden from history and that it is time for these to emerge from the shadows of the past.

Two female convict statues have been created for the world heritage-listed Cascades Female Factory in South Hobart and two, a boy and a girl, for the state heritage-listed Orphan Schools site.

From the Shadows is particularly significant for its recognition of the children incarcerated in the orphan Schools. There is nothing at the St John’s Park precinct site at New Town that tells the story of the orphan school children. Although the orphan school buildings survive largely intact, there is no acknowledgement of their original purpose or of the children who lived there. There is currently no public access to the buildings.

More than 400 children died there in care, mostly of preventable diseases.

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Rowan Gillespie’s sculptures are redolent of history, emotion and empathy. His approach to the orphan statues has been one of storytelling, remembering and healing. The story of the removal of children, some as young as 12 months, from their convict mothers has informed his work. Children have always been part of the convict story, if not always a visible one. Gillespie brings the history of the orphan school children to the foreground. This is the rationale for the location of the statues at the end of St John’s Avenue in front of St John’s Church – the children are no longer out of sight or mind. Historically, too, this is the way that children were brought to the orphan school.

Historical authenticity informs Gillespie’s narrative and shapes his work. His eight Tasmanian statues form a significant contribution to an understanding of a dark chapter in Tasmania’s history.

Rowan Gillespie at work, courtesy From the Shadows collection

For more information about From the Shadows Inc, see fromtheshadows.org.au. For more information about the Orphan Schools, see orphanschool.org.au, and Dianne Snowden’s book Voices from the Orphan School: The Children’s Voices, Hobart, 2018. For more information about Rowan Gillespie, see rowangillespie.net.

Dr Dianne Snowden was awarded a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) in 2017 for significant service to the community as a historian and genealogical researcher, to higher education, and to heritage groups. She is the author of several publications. She is currently researching free children who arrived with convict parents, and children in the orphan schools.