Fourth plinth

Fourth plinth

The fourth plinth on the northwest corner, designed by Sir Charles Barry and built in 1841, was intended to hold an equestrian statue of William IV, but remained empty due to insufficient funds. A statue of Edward Jenner, funded largely by public subscription, was unveiled on the fourth plinth in 1858, but protests by anti-vaccinationists led to its removal to Kensington Gardens four years later. Later, agreement could not be reached over which monarch or military hero to place there.

In 1999, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA) conceived the Fourth Plinth Project, which temporarily occupied the plinth with a succession of works commissioned from three contemporary artists. These were:

• Mark Wallinger: Ecce Homo (1999) – Wallinger's Ecce Homo – the Latin title of which means "Behold the man", a reference to the words of Pontius Pilate at the trial of Jesus Christ (John 19:5) – was a life-sized figure of Christ, naked apart from a loin cloth, with his hands bound behind his back and wearing a crown of barbed wire (in allusion to the crown of thorns). Atop the huge plinth, designed for larger-than-life statuary, it looked minuscule. Some commentators said that, far from making the Man look insignificant, his apparent tininess drew the eye powerfully; they interpreted it as a commentary on human delusions of grandeur.

• Bill Woodrow: Regardless of History (2000)

• Rachel Whiteread: Monument (2001) – Whiteread's Monument, by an artist already notable for her controversial Turner Prize-winning work House and the Judenplatz Holocaust Memorial in Vienna, was a cast of the plinth in transparent resin placed upside-down on top of the original.

Companies have used the plinth (often without permission) as a platform for publicity stunts, including a model of David Beckham by Madame Tussauds during the 2002 FIFA World Cup. The London-based American harmonica player Larry Adler jokingly suggested erecting a statue of Moby-Dick, which would then be called the "Plinth of Whales". A television ident for the British TV station Channel 4 shows a CGI Channel 4 logo on top of the fourth plinth.

The best use of the fourth plinth remains the subject of debate. On 24 March 2003 an appeal was launched by Wendy Woods, the widow of the anti-apartheid journalist Donald Woods, hoping to raise £400,000 to pay for a 9-foot-high (2.7 m) statue of Nelson Mandela by Ian Walters. The relevance of the location is that South Africa House, the South African high commission, scene of many anti-apartheid demonstrations, is on the east side of Trafalgar Square.

A committee convened to consider the RSA's late-1990s project concluded that it had been a success and "unanimously recommended that the plinth should continue to be used for an ongoing series of temporary works of art commissioned from leading national and international artists". After several years in which the plinth stood empty, the new Greater London Authority assumed responsibility for the fourth plinth and started its own series of changing exhibitions:

Antony Gormley standing on top of the fourth plinth at the opening of his art installation One & Other on 6 July 2009

• Marc Quinn: Alison Lapper Pregnant (unveiled 15 September 2005) – a 3.6-metre, 13-tonne marble torso-bust of Alison Lapper, an artist who was born with no arms and shortened legs due to a condition called phocomelia.

• Thomas Schütte: Model for a Hotel 2007 (formerly Hotel for the Birds) (unveiled 7 November 2007) – a 5-metre by 4.5-metre by 5-metre architectural model of a 21-storey building made from coloured glass. The work cost £270,000 and was funded primarily by the Mayor of London and the Arts Council of England. Sandy Nairne, director of the National Portrait Gallery and chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group that recommended Quinn's and Schütte's proposals to the Mayor in 2004, said: "There will be something extraordinarily sensual about the play of light through the coloured glass  ... [I]t's going to feel like a sculpture of brilliance and light."

• Antony Gormley: One & Other (6 July – 14 October 2009) – over the course of a hundred consecutive days, a total of 2,400 selected members of the public each spent one hour on the plinth. They were allowed to do anything they wished to and could take anything with them that they could carry unaided. Volunteers for the Fourth Plinth were invited to apply through the website www.oneandother.co.uk, and were chosen so that ethnic minorities and people from all parts of Britain were represented. For safety reasons, the plinth was surrounded by a net, and a team of six stewards were present 24 hours a day to make sure that, for instance, participants were not harmed by hecklers. There was a live feed of the plinth on the Internet sponsored by TV channel Sky Arts. Gormley said: "In the context of Trafalgar Square with its military, valedictory and male historical statues, this elevation of everyday life to the position formerly occupied by monumental art allows us to reflect on the diversity, vulnerability and particularity of the individual in contemporary society. It's about people coming together to do something extraordinary and unpredictable. It could be tragic but it could also be funny."

• Yinka Shonibare: Nelson's Ship in a Bottle (24 May 2010 – present) – this work, by a leading Anglo-Nigerian artist, consists of a replica of Nelson's ship, the HMS Victory, with sails made of printed fabric in a colourful African pattern inside a large glass bottle stopped with a cork. According to the Greater London Authority, the artwork is the first "to reflect specifically on the historical symbolism of Trafalgar Square, which commemorates the Battle of Trafalgar, and will link directly with Nelson's column. It is also the first commission by a black British artist."

In February 2008, Terry Smith, the chief executive of trading house Tullett Prebon, offered to pay more than £100,000 for a permanent statue acceptable to "ordinary Londoners" of Air Chief Marshal Sir Keith Park in recognition of his work as commander of No. 11 Group RAF during the Battle of Britain, as it was this Group that was responsible for the defence of London. A Greater London Authority spokesman said: "There are many worthy suggestions for statues on the fourth plinth and some people feel passionately about each of them. All proposals will be judged on their merits including its current use as one of the most high profile sites for contemporary public art in London. The cost of erecting the current work on the plinth is £270,000. The cost of a permanent monument is likely to be considerably more." Subsequently, it was announced in May 2009 that in autumn that year a 5-metre high fibreglass statue of Sir Keith would be placed on the fourth plinth for six months, with a 2.78-metre bronze statue permanently installed in Waterloo Place.