Aleksandra Mir | Freddie on the Plinth

Freddie on the Plinth is a proposal/petition and a tribute to two people with an unlikely connection: Queen singer Freddie Mercury and Czech sculptor called Irena Sedlecká. 

While a student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, Sedlecká was awarded the Lenin Prize for excellence and later created many celebrated socialist realist large-scale commissions. She and her husband fled the communist regime in 1967. After traveling through Yugoslavia, Italy and France, Sedlecká eventually settled in Britain. 

In London, following Mercury's death from AIDS in 1991, she received a commission to create a larger-than-life memorial statue of the rock star. The other members of Queen and the executors of Mercury's estate wished to memorialize him with a bronze statue, in lieu of a tombstone (Mercury was cremated and the location of his ashes was not publicly disclosed). 

The statue depicts the Queen frontman at Wembley Stadium, gesturing triumphantly, where Sedlecká first saw Queen perform, during Live Aid, in 1985. 

The Westminster Council rejected the work, ostensibly due to fears of vandalism (but reportedly the fear of glorifying AIDs and homosexuals). A home in Britain could not be found, and the work was offered to the city of Montreux, Switzerland, where Mercury owned a home and Queen a recording studio. It has become a site of pilgrimage for fans, who gather at the waters of Lake Geneva yearly to mark the singer's birthday. 

In 2010, Aleksandra Mir befriended Sedlecká, leading to a monograph on her work and a proposal to bring the statue back to London on temporary loan, to be exhibited on the famous fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

Sedlecká died in London on August 4, 2020, aged 91.

The 2011 book Freddie on the Plinth documented the pair's attempts to relocate the sculpture. Now, Mir is making the title available as an E-book. From an email she sent a couple of days ago: 

"To celebrate all things #freddiemercury this week I am relaunching the Retrospective Press as an eBook publishing enterprise!

My first eBook title is a re-issue of 'Freddie on the Plinth', a tribute to Mercury and the Czech sculptor Irena Sedlecká – an exploration of the convergence between Socialist Realism and Glam Rock, illustrated with 33 photographs of Irena's tumultuous life that mirrors nearly a century of European upheavals

Now in ENGLISH and SPANISH, and with a NEW foreword where I also talk about meeting Queen’s Art Director Richard Gray, who during the Live Aid gala and before the advent of jpegs would have deadline photographs sent from New York to London by commanding: Concorde them over!

Keep obscure Indie publishing Alive and help set this Rocket off!

1/ ENG: https://mybook.to/5rvY6

ESP: https://mybook.to/2SM86p

Search Amazon: Aleksandra Mir Freddie

2/ Spend $4.99 (or $0.00 with Kindle Unlimited Subscription)

3/ Download the Publication: Readable on any Screen. Just get the Kindle app and when you order the publication it will download directly to your device

4/ Feed the beast: Write an Honest Review / Comment

5/ Tell everybody: Queen fans, art students, academic sculptors, art and music historians, and all those who enjoy reading about dramatic historical events through the lens of unique and complex lives

Thanks with all of my Publishing X"