Queen and Country (artwork)
Encyclopedia
Queen and Country is an artwork by British artist Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen (artist)
Steve Rodney McQueen CBE is a British artist and filmmaker. He is a winner of the Golden Camera at the Cannes Film Festival, a Turner Prize and BAFTA.-Early years:...

. The work is a set of 155 sheets of stamp
Postage stamp
A postage stamp is a small piece of paper that is purchased and displayed on an item of mail as evidence of payment of postage. Typically, stamps are made from special paper, with a national designation and denomination on the face, and a gum adhesive on the reverse side...

s, each sheet commemorating a soldier who lost their life in the Iraq War between 2003 and 2008. The work was a co-commission between the Manchester International Festival
Manchester International Festival
The Manchester International Festival is an international cultural festival of original new work, held in the English city of Manchester. It is a biennial event, first taking place in June–July 2007, and subsequently recurring in the summers of 2009 and 2011...

 and the Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museum is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. The museum was founded during the First World War in 1917 and intended as a record of the war effort and sacrifice of Britain and her Empire...

.

Background

McQueen was commissioned, under the official war artists' programme at the Imperial War Museum, to produce a work of art about the British Armed Forces in the Iraq war. In 2006 he travelled to Basra
Basra
Basra is the capital of Basra Governorate, in southern Iraq near Kuwait and Iran. It had an estimated population of two million as of 2009...

 where he spent six days embedded with British troops. Initially he planned to produce a film about the troops he witnessed serving in Iraq but was frustrated by the restrictions on movement placed on him. He approached the US armed forces to work with them but that fell through.

Later at his home in Amsterdam
Amsterdam
Amsterdam is the largest city and the capital of the Netherlands. The current position of Amsterdam as capital city of the Kingdom of the Netherlands is governed by the constitution of August 24, 1815 and its successors. Amsterdam has a population of 783,364 within city limits, an urban population...

, McQueen was posting his tax return when he noticed the stamp on the envelope had a portrait of Vincent Van Gogh
Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh , and used Brabant dialect in his writing; it is therefore likely that he himself pronounced his name with a Brabant accent: , with a voiced V and palatalized G and gh. In France, where much of his work was produced, it is...

. The idea of using a stamp came to him: "a stamp has a beautiful scale, the proportions are right, the image, it is recognisable, and then it goes out into the world, who knows where. Perfect. Wonderful" McQueen said.

When McQueen suggested it to the Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....

 they were lukewarm about the idea, suggesting that McQueen do a landscape instead. The MOD would not supply photos of the deceased, so McQueen used a researcher to contact the families of those who had lost loved ones in Iraq and request an image of their loved ones. McQueen initially contacted 115 families, 98 agreed and 4 refused.

He created an oak cabinet containing a series of facsimile postage sheets which are mounted on 120 double-sided vertical panels, which can be withdrawn for viewing. Each sheet shows multiple portrait heads, each one dedicated to a deceased soldier, with details of name, regiment, age and date of death printed in the margin. The cabinet is ordered in chronological order from the four Royal Marines and three members of the Royal Regiment of Artillery who died on March 21, 2003, to Sergeant “Baz” Barwood of the RAF
Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Formed on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world...

, who was killed on February 29, 2008.

Royal Mail response

McQueen' intention was that the stamps would be issued by the Royal Mail
Royal Mail
Royal Mail is the government-owned postal service in the United Kingdom. Royal Mail Holdings plc owns Royal Mail Group Limited, which in turn operates the brands Royal Mail and Parcelforce Worldwide...

 for general use, however despite applying to the Royal Mail he was turned down several times. The Royal Mail has said that service personnel and their families would find pictures of the dead featuring on stamps "distressing and disrespectful". However the stamps have received support from families, the general public and members of the armed forces.

McQueen said "An official set of Royal Mail stamps struck me as an intimate but distinguished way of highlighting the sacrifice of individuals in defence of our national ideals.

The stamps would focus on individual experience without euphemism. It would form an intimate reflection of national loss that would involve the families of the dead and permeate the everyday – every household and every office."

The work was premiered in the Great Hall at Central Library
Manchester Central Library
Manchester Central Library is a circular library south of the extended Town Hall in Manchester, England. It acts as the headquarters of the Manchester Library & Information Service, which also consists of 22 other community libraries.Designed by E...

, Manchester
Manchester
Manchester is a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. According to the Office for National Statistics, the 2010 mid-year population estimate for Manchester was 498,800. Manchester lies within one of the UK's largest metropolitan areas, the metropolitan county of Greater...

in March 2007. Between then and July 2010 the work toured the UK.

McQueen considers the work incomplete until the stamps are released to the public. To that end a petition was created to gather support for the issuing of the stamps which acquired 26,673 signatures.
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