This installation by Antony Gormley was opened in July 2009 and will be running 24 hours a day for one hundred days. The artist, his previous work including 'The Angle of the North' and 'Another Place', invites the public to create a "living monument" on the empty Fouth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, London. This plinth has previously displayed work by Marc Quinn (Alison Lapper Pregnant, 2005) and other artists for short periods of time, but the question of what the plinth should be permanently used for has also been subject to much debate and criticism. Gormley is "asking the people of the UK to occupy the empty Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square in London, a space normally reserved for statues of Kings and Generals. They will become an image of themselves, and a representation of the whole of humanity."
I have stood many times by this plinth and watched whoever is on the Plinth at the time, it feels quite intrusive yet compelling to continue to watch. I get a sense of Big Brother/reality-tv style voyeurism here, the question seems to pop into my head about what is the purpose of this and why is it here.
"Through elevation onto the plinth, and removal from the common ground, the body becomes a metaphor, a symbol… In the context of Trafalgar Square with its military, valedictory and male historical statues to specific individuals, 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 could be tragic but it could also be funny."
www.oneandother.co.uk
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