WAKEFIELD.- A new work by UK contemporary artist Katrina Palmer was unveiled today at Yorkshire Sculpture Park in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. Co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW, the UK’s arts programme for the First World War centenary, and YSP, The Coffin Jump takes as a point of departure the role of an extraordinary group of women in the First World War. Combining sculpture, soundtrack and performance, The Coffin Jump symbolises the new challenges and freedoms afforded to women in the war, with specific reference to the all-female First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (FANY). Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal is Commandant-in-Chief of the organisation, which is referred to today as the Princess Royal's Volunteer Corps.

Founded in 1907, Captain Edward Baker’s conception of the FANY was of women on horseback riding to the rescue of fallen men in the battlefield. Although the FANY ultimately drove motored ambulances, their role was and continues to be as powerfully independent and transformative as this original vision.

At YSP, visitors will see an intervention in the historic deer park, comprising an inscribed fence above a trench. This negative horizon, a line that cuts across the landscape and descends into a shallow depression, resonates with the trench as a site of mortality but also new beginnings as the woman on horseback cheats death.

In spite of the nurses’ courage, the British Army initially refused to be associated with the liberated women of the FANY. So instead they supported the French and Belgian armies, running hospitals and driving ambulances. Palmer makes reference to their battle against prejudice through words on the artwork drawn from sources including the 1918 diaries of FANY member Muriel Thompson.

The Coffin Jump will occasionally be activated by a horse and local rider who will gallop across the Park and make the jump. A symbol of independent mobility and action, capturing the emergence of female emancipation, the galloping horse also echoes the death of Emily Davison who famously stepped in front of the King George V’s horse at the Epsom Derby in 1913.

Today, as the Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps, the FANY deploys multi-faceted rapid response teams to support civil and military authorities in times of crisis. They are the longest established uniformed ‘military’ voluntary organisation for women in the world and the only all-women unit left in the UK. Most recently, FANYs were deployed following the terrorist attacks in Manchester, Westminster and London Bridge, and the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017. FANY volunteers provided 1,835 hours of support over a period of just over three months, assisting a wide range of organisations including the City of London Police.

The Coffin Jump is co-commissioned by 14-18 NOW and YSP, made possible with Art Fund support. Special thanks to Sir David Verey, The Henry Moore Foundation and The Clothworkers’ Company. With additional support from Melanie Gee, Larissa Joy and thanks to Midge & Simon Palley, Nicholas & Jane Ferguson and Tony McCallum.