The latest artwork to grace Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth has been unveiled this morning (10 September).
Lady in Blue is the work of New York-based artist Tschabalala Self, and is a large, bronze figure depicting “a young, metropolitan woman — a quotidian figure — reflecting many of today’s Londoners”. She’s captured mid-step, as if striding purposefully across the Square.
The woman wears an eye-catching vibrant blue dress and shoes, along with jewellery which replicates the colour of lapis lazuli, a rare rock which has been used as a pigment since antiquity.
The Fourth Plinth — located in the Square’s north-west corner, close to the National Gallery — has displayed a rotating programme of artworks continuously since 2005. Here’s a look at all of the previous artworks and where they ended up once their time on the plinth was over.
Lady in Blue replaces Mil Veces un Instante (A Thousand Times in an Instant) by Teresa Margolles, which features the face casts of 726 trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming people from the UK and Mexico, and had been in situ on the plinth since September 2024.
Hot on the (high) heels of Lady in Blue will be Untitled by Andra Ursuţa, “a hollow, life-sized person on a horse covered in a shroud and cast in a slime-green resin”, which is due to be installed on the Fourth Plinth in 2028.
