Much admiration for the mordant humour of David Shrigley’s latest drawings and paintings, which went on show at the Stephen Friedman Gallery last night (18 March)—his ninth show with the gallery. Keen anticipation was also expressed amongst the private view crowd for Shrigley’s giant 10m-high bronze thumb, which will be gracing the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square later this year.
This perkily suggestive monument provided the springboard for a robust debate that then carried over to the post-private view dinner with your correspondent and various others, including The Foundling Museum director Caro Howell, bemoaning the lamentable state of public sculpture in the capital—from the St Pancras Kissing Couple to the Halcyon Gallery horrors in Park Lane—and calling for the reinstatement of Philip Vaughan’s 14m-high Neon Tower, which resided on the roof of the Hayward Gallery from 1972 until it was taken down in 2008 for renovation and never put back.
However, when quizzed about the fate of this much-loved London landmark, which was also the capital’s first light-based sculpture, fellow dinner guest and Hayward Gallery director Ralph Rugoff (who took up his post at the gallery two years before Neon Tower came down) made it clear that he had little regard for the work and no plans to reinstate it in the future. Rugoff declared that the Hayward roof terraces were now needed for the installation of other artworks and that he believed any affection felt for Neon Tower was based more on nostalgia than its intrinsic quality as a work of art. But while nostalgia may have a part to play—the sight of this geometric beacon animating the massed buildings of the Southbank and changing colour according to the strength and velocity of the wind—is keenly missed by many, including artists Antony Gormley and Ron Arad, and the Guardian’s Adrian Searle, all of whom have expressed a willingness to play an active part in its reinstatement. So while Shrigley gives the Fourth Plinth his thumbs-up, keep an eye on that empty space on the Southbank.