Tag Archives: Trafalgar Square

Blue humour

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Katharina Fritsch, Hahn/Cock, 2013

Katharina Fritsch, Hahn/Cock, 2013

Not before time, thinking about Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant brings me back to London and to the oversized cock that is Katharina Fritsch’s work for the fourth plinth: Cock (or Hahn/Cock to give it its full German and English title). Of all the works yet to grace the plinth, and there have been some great ones, some less great ones and one that seemed to make it rain all summer*, I think Hahn/Cock is probably the one that has amused me the most. In the damp greyness of this less than satisfactory winter, it stands proud on the plinth ready to make people chuckle.

It’s big. It’s blue. It’s a cock. What’s not to smile at?

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Projections of power

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Krzysztof Wodiczko, City Projections – Nelson’s Column, 1985

Commissioned to make a projection onto Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Sqaure for two nights in 1985, Krzysztof Wodiczko focused on the military aspects of the square and decided to project an image of a missile wrapped in barbed wire. But while in London for the event, Wodiczko realised that the square, as home of South Africa House, also played host to a longterm protest against the apartheid regime still very much in charge of South Africa and supported by then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher.

Redirecting his projector, Wodiczko changed the image…

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A horse, of course

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Elmgreen and Dragset, Powerless Structures Fig. 101, 2012

If, in a public square in a capital city, you have an empty plinth intended for a statue of a figure on a horse then what better to put on it than a statue of a figure on a horse? After testing a lot of alternatives on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, the plinth that never quite got its statue, it should come as no surprise that the powers that be have yielded to the inevitable and installed the statue that was always meant to be there. Sort of.

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