Sculpture for rent: the new bling

Temporary public sculpture, such as the changing exhibitions of new work on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square, are proving a great success.

Sculpture is something we mentally associate with permanence. A statue is a symbol of the outlasting of mortality, and, once it's gone up, we don't expect it to come down or even budge. But the success of the changing exhibitions of new work on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square has challenged this ingrained orthodoxy, and introduced us to the pleasures of temporary public sculpture.

The philanthropist Wilfred Cass has picked up on the idea and taken it a stage further. His Sculpture Foundation, established in 1992, commissions sculpture and then displays it in a wooded garden near Goodwood. Each piece is also for sale, with profits split between the artist and the foundation.

Cass has now started a scheme whereby commissioned sculpture can also be rented, for anything between £500 and £13,000 a month, plus expenses of transportation and insurance. Because the displays are only temporary, tedious planning restrictions and red tape can be circumvented, and Wembley Stadium, BMW's Munich headquarters and the Grosvenor Estate have already taken up the offer. It's a great idea not only for industrial and housing developments, trade exhibitions and Olympic villages, but also, I feel, for those blinging weddings and parties recorded in the annals of Hello! and OK!

I look forward to seeing Stephen Cox's Lingam of a Thousand Lingams or Phillip King's Sun and Moon as the centrepiece of the next celebrity bash in the grounds of Beckingham Palace.


Article by Rupert Christiansen, first published in the Telegraph, 11 May 2009.