The Battle for Trafalgar Square's Fourth Plinth

LONDON, Jan. 8 -- Sculpted meerkats, the remains of a car bombed in Iraq and live members of the public are vying for a place alongside monuments to Britain's military heroes in London's iconic Trafalgar Square.

City officials on Tuesday unveiled a shortlist of six artworks competing to fill the "fourth plinth" in the square's northwest corner. Built in 1841 for an equestrian statue that was never completed and empty for a century and a half, it has been occupied since 1999 by a series of new artworks erected for 18 months at a time.

Finalists to fill the space next year include Jeremy Deller's "The Spoils of War (Memorial for an Unknown Civilian)," the remains of a vehicle destroyed in an attack on civilians in Iraq; Anish Kapoor's "Sky Plinth," which would use five mirrors to reflect the sky to passersby; and Tracey Emin's "Something for the Future," a sculpture of a group of meerkats.

Emin -- whose autobiographically charged past work includes a re-creation of her disheveled bed and an appliqued tent titled "Everyone I Have Ever Slept With" -- called the meerkat, a desert mammal from the mongoose family that lives in highly organized small groups, a symbol of unity and safety.

Emin said she noticed that at times of national crisis and loss, such as the death of Princess Diana, "the next program on television is 'Meerkats United.' "

The British sculptor Antony Gormley is proposing the plinth be occupied around the clock by members of the public -- more than 8,700 over the course of a year -- who would volunteer for hour-long shifts. Gormley said the project would raise themes of "diversity, vulnerability and the individual in contemporary society."

The other contenders are Yinka Shonibare's "Nelson's Ship in a Bottle," a reproduction of the HMS Victory, Adm. Horatio Nelson's flagship at the battle of Trafalgar; and "Faites L'Art, Pas La Guerre (Make Art, Not War)," a sun- and wind-powered illuminated peace sign by Bob and Roberta Smith, the pseudonym of artist Patrick Brill.

Models of the artworks will be displayed at the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square until the end of March.

The winner will be selected by a committee and announced later in the year. It will be erected in the square once the current occupant, Thomas Schuette's "Model for a Hotel 2007," is taken down next year.

Trafalgar Square was designed in 1838 as London's first public square and named after Nelson's 1805 victory over the French and Spanish fleets, in which he lost his life. A statue of the one-armed admiral stands atop Nelson's column at the center of the square, which also contains statues of King George IV and two military commanders in India, Gen. Charles Napier and Maj. Gen. Sir Henry Havelock.