British History Timeline Mural

British History Timeline (2019) is an 80’ x 4’ site-specific mural, executed by Matthew Dennis, in ten 8’ x 4’ MDF panels, in St. Michael’s School’s lower playground.

This mural was commissioned by the school and draws on Ofsted’s guidance for teaching history to primary school age groups (Ofsted 2011, pp. 45-56). Choice of historical period, ideas for subjects and episodes came from the school’s teachers, but the decisions about the visual imagery employed, interpretation of the episodes into visual images, the text chosen, and the execution of the work itself were Dennis’ work. The mural sets aside visual proportionality in the traditional ‘Timeline’. In its place, it isolates key events from British history and represents these sequentially and non-hierarchically, across the mural’s 10-panels, so as to render each historical period equally ‘present,’ both spatially and conceptually. The content follows the National Curriculum for history at primary schools (Department of Education 2013) but adds a visual iconography from a range of sources. Accompanying words as sub-titles/graphics reinforce the images and mimic the look of the on-screen information of 24-hour TV news services, while unifying the entire span of the subject matter as one single, contemporaneous ‘event.’ The distinctive colour ‘signature’ of each panel blends visual languages together, simultaneously evoking the ‘field’ of heraldry, the schematic layout of modern and contemporary poster design and children’s book illustration. Other references used were the Social Realism of the American WPA mural projects of the 1930s (Harris, 1995; Morgan 2004) and James Rosenquist’s F-111 (1967). The mural’s dynamic movement and use of strong, simple silhouettes is offset by the inclusion of descriptive detail, intended to draw its young audience into an immersive experience. The anecdotal detail, also employed by Horrible Histories, aims to make history accessible to young viewers.