Opening of exhibition of potential works for Trafalgar Square fourth plinth: artist interviews

Opening of exhibition of potential works for Trafalgar Square fourth plinth: artist interviews; Jeremy Deller (Artist) interview SOT - Public competitions are fine / You don't have to go in for them / About 30 or so artists invited to submit ideas for this competition, then whittled down to six / I was born in London so am very aware of Trafalgar Square / Everyone in the country has an idea of what they want to see on the fourth plinth so it is not about art but about the general public / Submitted 2 other ideas but they liked this one the most / The idea is for a car from Iraq to be brought to the UK, a car that has been involved in a terrorist incident / A destroyed car / All very strong ideas and populist ideas / None of us have seen an object from the Iraq war / To have a 3 dimensional object from Iraq is quite important / The car now has replaced the body in terms of news stories, can't show burned body but can show burned car / If that horror was seen every night then the war would not have happened in the way it did / The idea came very quickly / Tried to get an anonymous model of a car (for the maquette) / Plinth has almost public version of Turner Prize / The title for the work was intially 'memorial to an unknown civilian' but also I gave it another title 'The Spoils of War' because this has traditionally been done by victorious nation / Idea of imperial pride / Something like Cleopatra's Needle might be a similar kind of object / Had to be clear about what my intentions were / Bringing anything from Iraq is going to be sensitive / If you are an adolescent then the whole of your teens will have been coloured by watching Iraq war on television news / We are going to live with consequences of war for the rest of our lives / I would be amazed if it was chosen / Would be very happy