Surface battles: Applying, erasing and conserving graffiti on the Colston statue, 1998 to the present

This article examines the surfaces of contested heritage objects through a case study of the ‘surface battles’ waged on the statue of Edward Colston (1636–1721) in Bristol, England. It uncovers histories of the application, removal and conservation of graffiti from the surface of the statue and plinth from 1998 to the present. In part, this signals the ways that graffiti has remade the object. But it also points to the changing meanings given to graffiti once the statue was toppled, with the decision to make these ephemeral additions permanent. Critical here was the de-coupling of plinth and statue, with the latter seen, officially at least, as public art object in the urban streetscape and the former historical object in a museum, although such thinking was not shared by all. Focusing on surface battles on contested statues raises the broader question of whether surfaces offer the potential for democratising the monument.