Elizabeth and Mary: Royal Cousins, Rival Queens
British Library, 2021

This exhibition took a revealing look at the extraordinary relationship and rivalry between cousins Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots.

The design created the multiple halls, arcades and dark corridors where the events of their lives took place or were decided. We developed a series of modular metal frames to work with the library’s showcases and carry printed fabric scenography. These have continued to be used for many subsequent exhibitions.
The convoluted route used the impressive double-height of the gallery, the tall staggered printed gauzes used photographs of the actual locations where many of the letters displayed were written, evoking a jagged scenography with shifting perspectives seen through the gaps as the visitors moved through the space. Red colours represented Elizabeth, and blue for Mary.

The feeling of oppressed paranoia culminated in Elizabeth signing Mary’s execution order, witnessed as a red room with the words of Mary’s last sonnet projected behind. Following this the visitor stepped out into the high gallery space for the uplifting Tilbury speech of Elizabeth and defeat of the Spanish Armada before finally entering the central Lady Chapel where replica tomb effigies of the two queens lay side by side under a suspended paper version of the perpendicular gothic ceiling at Westminster Abbey.