After 2,400 'art objects', plinth is finally empty

Published on Wednesday 14 October 2009 21:00

THE "fourth plinth" experiment that gave Britons the chance to shed their inhibitions – and even their clothes – was hailed a success by its creator as it drew to a close yesterday.

Over 100 days, 2,400 people scaled the stone plinth in London's Trafalgar Square to spend their hour of fame as they wished.

Some shed their clothes, while others sang, danced, looked for jobs or railed against issues such as global warming.

Cheers rang out around the square just after 9am as the final plinther, Emma Burns, a 30-year-old medical photographer from Darlington, County Durham, was guided down after finishing her stint.

Artist Antony Gormley, who came up with the scheme, said he was sad to see the experiment end but insisted it had been a success.

He said: "It's a very strange mixed emotion. On the one hand, you've finished – we've done what we said we were going to do, we've had 2,400 unbroken hours of occupation by living, human people in a place of bronze public sculpture and that's an achievement.

"But at the same time, I'm very sad that it's over. It's become, in a way, part of London life.

"I think now when I look up and see the empty plinth, in a way I can't help but remember what it was like occupied."

Ms Burns, who used her final slot to remember the football fans who died during the Hillsborough disaster,

said: "I can't even describe it. It was just fantastic to be given the opportunity to talk about the victims of Hillsborough."

The artwork has attracted a number of people seemingly desperate to shed their inhibitions to the watching world.

A plinther called Lady Godiva conducted her session naked apart from a pair of boots and lived up to her namesake by riding a horse – although in her case, it was a child's rocking horse. A nudist performer was asked to cover up by police after a complaint and another participant, Naomi M, used her hour to pole dance topless.

A participant called Gunter took to the plinth in a green body suit with his face covered. He then disappeared into a tent, throwing out inflatable models and releasing a live chicken. He later emerged naked and threw himself into the protective net.

Mr Gormley denied nudity had become a serious problem. "I think that nine out of 2,400 is actually a very small percentage, so we are still relatively prudish," he said.

Scotsman writer Lee Randall, one of the early plinthers, said: "Three months on, I still reckon it was one of the highlights of my year. The sensation was one of stillness and serenity. But I still laugh, recalling that all the holes for the balancing poles were filled with paperclips and magenta sequins."

If this was art at all, the message was alienation

ANTHONY Gormley improved a little on Andy Warhol's famous dictum that we each get 15 minutes of fame to grant each plinther a full hour standing as a living statue on the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square.

I think it is fair to say that no-one among the mix of exhibitionists, eccentrics and earnest promoters of themselves and other good causes has earned more than their allotted hour.

There has been a lot of debate as to whether or not what Gormley has done is art, let alone good art. He called it One and Another and said it would show the rich diversity of ordinary British folk.

In his remarks at the closing of the project yesterday he compared the patchwork of humanity that it portrayed very favourably to the uniform marching millions of China's National Day.

But the plinthers were up there all alone. No matter how exhibitionist they may have been, they remained remote and isolated. They were tiny figures of pathos, cut off from any community by a huge safety net. They were only really visible in the television's baleful eye.

I think the picture he has given us is quite other than either his intention or his claim. It is one of an alienated, lonely existence without community, mediated by television. If it is indeed art, then, let's hope it is bad art and not an accurate picture of our world.

&#149 Duncan MacMillan is The Scotsman's visual art critic