Due dei cinque saranno selezionati per le prossime edizioni del Fourth Plinth a Londra, eccovi i bozzetti tra cui a fine Marzo saranno selezionati i vincitori, se volete potete andare a votare nella S.Martin in the Field Crypte.
This large and imposing figure is made from brown cork and white polystyrene. It is smeared with expressionistic, painterly marks. The pose and scale reflects a modern comic sci-fi movie, where legendary cities skylines become backdrops for CGI action figures.
Trafalgar Square is the setting for this strange, yet familiar superhero. But, the sculpture goes beyond comic book culture and pop art. The use of humble materials and being hand carved connects it to African art, Picasso, Rodin and other early 20th Century works.
Huma Bhabha was born in 1962 in Karachi, Pakistan. She lives and works in New York.
I like: Huma Bhabha - Untitled
Damián Ortega: High
Damian Ortega High Fourth Plinth Shortlist
Higher is a tall construction of a truck, oil cans, scaffold and ladders, it is playful and precarious, as though it might suddenly collapse. Our first response is alarm, before we realise we have been duped, the casual construction is contrived, the sculpture is safe and secure.
Public sculptures are often monumental so they can be seen from a distance. The human scale of Higher is in deliberate contrast to this. Its odd construction represents imbalance and fragility, a device frequently used by Ortega.
Damián Ortega was born in 1967 in Mexico City, where he lives and works.
I like: Damián Ortega - High
Heather Phillipson: The End
THE END represents exuberance and unease. Topped with a giant, unstable load, the plinth becomes a monument to over-confidence and impending collapse. The surrounding architecture of Trafalgar Square and its population are participants in a mis-scaled landscape, one that magnifies the banal, and our cohabitation with other lifeforms, to apocalyptic proportions.
Trafalgar Square sees extremes of shared experience, from commemorations and celebrations to mass protests. This sculpture attempts to address the physical context of the square, whilst considering a broader ideological one.
Heather Phillipson was born in 1978 in London, where she lives and works.
I like: Heather Phillipson - The End
Michael Rakowitz: The Invisible Enemy Should not Exist
Michael Rakowitz The Invisible Enemy Should not Exist Fourth Plinth Shortlist
The Fourth Plinth is roughly 14 feet high. That’s the same size as the Lamassu, a winged bull and protective deity that stood at the entrance to Nergal Gate of Nineveh from c 700 B.C. In 2015 it was destroyed by ISIS along with other artefacts in Mosul Museum. The Lamassu will be made of empty Iraqi date syrup cans, representative of a once-renowned industry decimated by the Iraq Wars.
Rebuilding the Lamassu in Trafalgar Square means the sculpture can carry on as a guardian of Nineveh’s past, present and future, even as a refugee or ghost, hoping one day to return to Iraq.
Michael Rakowitz was born in New York in 1973. He lives and works in Chicago.
I like: Michael Rakowitz -The Invisible Enemy Should not Exist
Raqs Media Collective: The Emperor’s Old Clothes
The Emperor’s Old Clothes uses sculpture to look at how power can be both present and absent in sculpture.
The artists invoke a statue, a stony relic of the British Empire, only to take away the body of power from this figure, leaving just an empty robe as a remainder. The robe, empty of the figure it clothed, is like the royalty left behind by an emperor who went out in search of new clothes in Delhi. What remains on the plinth in London are the emperor’s old clothes, a ghost of the past and a warning for the future.
Spaces like Trafalgar Square encourage us to look to those who have wielded power. But being there is not just about considering the relics of powerful men. It is also a place that thousands of ordinary men visit, where they meet each other and pass the time.
Raqs (pronounced Rux) Media Collective was founded in 1992 by Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta.
