To coincide with the opening of her first one-woman show in Scotland, this week’s picture shows Rachel Whiteread’s public sculpture, Monument, which currently sits on the so-called “Fourth Plinth” in Trafalgar Square. The plinth in question had been unoccupied for 158 years until 1999, when Prue Leith, then chairman of the Royal Society of Arts, proposed that it be used to display contemporary sculptures. Following Mark Wallinger’s Ecce Homo, a touchingly slight representation of Christ as Everyman, and a large allegorical bronze by Bill Woodrow, Whiteread’s creation is the third and possibly last work of modern art to be allowed into the exalted company of Nelson and his fierce attendant lions. Planning permission has been granted for the sculpture to remain in situ until May of next year, but after that its future is unclear. The Greater London Authority, which recently took over responsibility for the plinth, is thought to favour a permanent monument to Nelson Mandela, of more or less traditional design.

Whiteread was originally asked to consider making a sculpture for Trafalgar Square more than three years ago. Her initial response was “God, Trafalgar Square, it’s ridiculous!” but still she took the proposal seriously enough to spend a day there milling around with the rest of the tourists. “It’s somewhere I went to as a kid, but basically I had ignored it for years. Spending a day there made me think about the chaos of London, the tourism, the traffic, the kind of madness of that area. And I thought: wouldn’t it be nice to try and make a kind of pause, make something that is almost timeless, and makes you stop and think and look.”

Her solution was to place on top of the plinth an exact replica of the plinth itself, albeit one...

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