Artist Paul Cocksedge is beaming from ear to ear in Trafalgar Square. It’s installation day for the sculpture he’s created for this year’s London design festival and, like the many other visitors to one of the capital’s best known public spaces, he’s enjoying the sunshine.
His new work – What Nelson Sees – looks good in the bright light. The fused bundle of weathered steel industrial pipes is eye-catchingly at odds with the grand fountains, statues and Victorian pomp of the massive bronze lions. But this sculpture is completely site-specific: press a play button and look into one of the eyepieces embedded into three of the five pipes and you see images of the surrounding city from the viewpoint of naval commander Horatio Nelson’s statue 45m up in the sky. Keep watching and the eyepiece plays a film which runs through AI-generated imagery of the view since before Nelson’s Column was first erected and then goes on into a possible future of pedestrianised streets and rooftops covered in hydroponics.
