City Hall spent £263,035 of taxpayer cash on the latest Fourth Plinth statue. Can we just have air there instead?
Lady in Blue, by American artist Tschabalala Self, went up in Trafalgar Square on 10 September 2026. The bill to the taxpayer includes a £200,000 “contribution” towards production and installation, and a £30,000 fee for Self. Oh, and don’t forget £1,000 for a plaque…
Scaffolding cost a further £23,795. In FOI documents City Hall said the sum covered installation, safety checks, removal, and “out of hours work.” The £30,000 artist fee is “not repayable.” City Hall calls this “industry standard” and claims it covers about two years of work. Another £8,240 went on site visits and testing…
City Hall’s blurb describes the questionable statue as “a quotidian figure,” a “contemporary ‘everywoman’,” and “not an idol to revere or a historic figurehead to commemorate”. She is apparently “striding forward into our collective future with ambition and purpose.” What…
In its announcement of the statue the GLA boasted that it was unveiled “days after Black on the Square, a free one-day festival that took place in Trafalgar Square.” In a promotional interview with the Guardian the artist said the statue was meant to counter the “heavy history” of the other plinths:
“It’s about there being space for all in places that were formerly weighted down by antiquated gestures, belief systems and impossibilities. I didn’t want to make an artwork that was reactionary to the history that has already happened.”
If the statue is ever sold, the GLA says it will get its £200,000 under the contract. Don’t hold your breath…
UPDATE: Tory mayoral hopeful Alex Challoner says he would scrap the plinth:
“The madness of the fourth plinth has to stop. The plinth was built as the location for an equestrian statue of King William IV which sadly was never added. Londoners have had enough, as Mayor I will stop the plinth being used to showcase questionable woke art and instead install a statue of Queen Elizabeth ll on horseback – our nations greatest ever monarch and lover of everything equestrian.”
Robert Jenrick on the Today programme:
“Can you now give a guarantee to your listeners this morning that no BBC presenter in the future will be exposed as a paedophile, as a number have been in the recent past? No, of course you can’t…”