Stevenson was first drawn to the romanticism of decay and neglect evident in the structure of Temple Station roof terrace and in particular, its balustrade with its missing balusters.  Sir Joseph Bazalgette, the great Victorian engineer, who masterminded the construction of London’s sewage system and saved London from cholera and the ‘great stink’ by constructing the Embankment and Temple roof terrace in c.1865, is rightly celebrated in a monument on the Embankment nearby.  But what of those who are always missing from the stories of great men:  the wives, mothers and women?  Given that of the 1500 statues in London only 50 name specific women, Stevenson saw a space to celebrate the untold, invisible, unpaid but essential support roles of women across the world and throughout history.  

The balusters’ curvaceous fecund form (meaning ‘pomegranate flower’) is womanly, they are many, they look the same, they carry out their essential work together, silently, invisibly.  The monotonous rhythm of the balustrade tells the story of the repetitive grind of womanhood and motherhood.  That rhythm carries the viewer around the perimeter of the Artist’s Garden until it stops: to contemplate a subtle shrine in the form of Another Mother.  This robust ceramic work is an ode to Maria Kough Bazalgette (1819 – 1902), who gave birth to 11 children in 15 years, all of which survived into middle age and beyond with one exception.  Stevenson’s replacement baluster is a surreal tribute to Maria, who will go down in history as just Another Mother.   Although it hints at the bow in her hair from an early photograph and is adorned with flowers representing her children, it is not a portrait. Taking the form of a caryatid, a sculpted female form used in architecture to decoratively hold up the parapet, it is a semi-abstract shrine to all unsung women.   In the zeitgeist, the sculpture is crowned with a concave blue sky with yellow stars, only visible from street level, a tonal nod to women and children forced to flee male oppression.  

Stevenson’s Another Mother does not dominate, it does not shout.She was spurred on by a desire to maintain, to improve the neglected perimeter of the site with subtle force.Influenced by the important work of Mierle Laderman Ukeles, whose performances and manifestos took domestic/women’s work (such as scrubbing the steps of the Wadsworth Atheneum of Art in Connecticut, USA) and turned them into what she called ‘Maintenance Art’, an important form of civic or public art.Like Ukeles’, Stevenson’s maintenance work is set to be of long duration, as she embarks on her residency in the Artist’s Hut kept company by a quarrelling family of her sculptures sitting on a garden bench watching her explore what it means to be a baluster and what it means to be a woman.