Please note: Absentee is now on display in the South-East Parlour of the Queen's House.

Glass, stainless steel cable, 1999

Absentee by Rosie Leventon, 1999. Repro ID: E0226-1 ©National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, LondonOne of the highlights of the National Maritime Museum is the restored stern of the HMS Implacable. This French 74-gun ship was launched in 1800. After a chequered career in which she was captured after the Battle of Trafalgar and subsequently used as a Royal Navy vessel, a training ship and then a holiday home for boys, she was scuttled in 1949 off the Isle of Wight. All that remains is the salvaged stern and figurehead.

Rosie Leventon's sculpture pays tribute to the history of HMS Implacable. Absentee is a ghostly re-creation of the Implacable made from over a hundred pieces of glass attached together like chainmail: a ship that will never float. The sculpture is suspended from the glass roof of Neptune Court to form the shape of the historic ship, glistening as the light reflects off the many glass pieces. During the creation of the work, Leventon was particularly interested in the quality of light and space within the new architecture of the Museum that would house it. Her work registers things that are lost, hidden, forgotten, or have been destroyed and exist only in memory. This delicate work stands as a testimony to a lost past and the heritage represented by the Implacable.