Whipped cream? What’ll they put in Trafalgar Square next?
A GIANT dollop of whipped cream topped with a cherry, a fly and a drone is to become the latest ‘artwork’ to baffle crowds in Trafalgar Square for the next two years.
Designed by Heather Phillipson, the sculpture created for the London landmark’s Fourth Plinth is titled The End and is intended ‘to highlight issues of surveillance and public space and the status of the square itself’.
The drone perched on the cherry will transmit live video of crowds in the square, which people will be able to view on their phones via a website.
Organisers describe the bizarre sculpture as ‘a monument to hubris and impending collapse’. The artist, pictured right, reportedly chose whipped cream because it represents a luxury item that could collapse at any minute.
But the sculpture seems likely to split opinion. Celebrity doctor and presenter of Supersize vs Superskinny, Christian Jessen, was unimpressed, tweeting: ‘A giant swirl of replica whipped cream topped with a cherry, a fly and a drone is set to appear on the Fourth Plinth. Hmm… modern art and I shall never be comfortable together.’
Ms Phillipson’s recent work includes large sculptures of fried eggs on a London
Underground station platform. The End will be the 13th sculpture to fill the plinth since the project’s inception in 1998.
Each artist chosen to display their work receives £30,000. Installations that have provoked debate include Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship In A Bottle, which featured a replica of HMS Victory in a glass bottle ‘inspired by the legacy of British colonialism’. Some objected to Marc Quinn’s nude of disabled artist Alison Lapper in 2005, while others railed against the eccentric members of the public Antony Gormley invited on to the plinth in 2009.