Tracey Emin's Meerkats To Invade the Fourth Plinth?
by Zoe Strimpel
Tue, 8 Jan 2008 at 4:15 PM
Contenders for one of London's most high-profile displays of public art, the Fourth Plinth at Trafalgar Square, were unveiled today at the National Gallery. Possible replacements for Thomas Schütte's screamingly bright glass "Model for a Hotel 2007" come from Jeremy Deller, Tracey Emin, Antony Gormley, Anish Kapoor, Yinka Shonibare, and Bob & Roberta Smith.
Ms. Emin and Mr. Gormley perhaps boast the biggest cults of personality and brand. So chuckles and the odd smirk were seen today when it transpired that Mr. Gormley — a spatially ambitious sculptor whose recent London work includes giant casts of himself looming from buildings on the South Bank — proposed to pile real people (volunteers, likely chosen by ballot) on the plinth for an hour per batch, 24 hours a day, for a year. How processing members of the public up and down the plinth all day and night would work in terms of health and safety — to say the least — is an interesting question. It was reported today, however, that police would be on hand to make sure nothing went amiss.
Ms. Emin, an unpredictable and certainly an original artist, famous for entering the 1999 Turner Prize competition with her sex-soiled bed ("My Bed") and for her pithy neons, has proposed a sculpture of a small group of meerkats, "a symbol of unity and safety."
Mr. Kapoor's idea is five concave mirrors facing off the plinth, in permanent display of changing skyscapes, called "Sky Plinth." Less cheery — and in this Londoner's opinion, too political— is Mr. Deller's "The Spoils of War (Memorial for an unknown civilian)," a real bombed-out Iraqi vehicle, destroyed in an attack on Iraqi civilians. Far jollier, and arguably more in keeping with the setting (almost quaintly so), is Mr. Shonibare's bottled scale replica of Nelson's HMS Victory, "Nelson's Ship in a Bottle." Finally, Bob & Roberta Smith offer an illuminated sign displaying the words "Faîtes L'Art, pas La Guerre" ("Make Art, Not War"), powered by the sun and wind.
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