THE END by Heather Phillipson

Right now, on the Plinth, reigns the tallest piece to date: THE END by London-born, multi-media artist and award-winning poet Heather Phillipson. Its unveiling was delayed from March to July 2020 as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and after being selected alongside The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist by Michael Rakowitz in 2017.

This 13th commission is made of steel and polystyrene with a sprayed polyurethane hardcoat, stands 9.4m tall, weighs 9,000kg and likens a giant swirl of whipped cream, topped by a cherry, a fly and a drone that transmits a live feed of the Square. 

At first THE END seems playful, but the sugary swirl has an unexpected twist - the drone’s camera watching us, watching it. The live feed of the Square is picked up by the camera and can be watched on a dedicated website www.theend.today giving a view as seen by the sculpture's  ‘eye’. 

THE END is also the first fully accessible commission on the Fourth Plinth. There is a braille panel included on the plaque, a tactile image of the work and an audio description on the Greater London Authority’s website. 

"I’m honoured to have been selected to make work for such a significant public site, and to see THE END scaled up for its ultimate size and context – one in which the surrounding architecture and its population are participants in a mis-scaled landscape, magnifying the banal, and our co-habitation with other lifeforms, to apocalyptic proportions.”  ~Heather Phillipson