A century after Stonehenge was gifted to the nation, a very British sort of celebration is being curated by the artist Jeremy Deller, including a chance to leap around on his lifesize inflatable version of the monument.

Sacrilege, Deller’s irreverent, rubbery incarnation of the monument has toured the globe, but is being blown up for the first time on the Stonehenge site for a pleasingly eccentric anniversary party that begins on Friday.

The Turner Prize winner has also produced a striking series of images of the stone circle, taking a 100-year-old photograph and touching it up with psychedelic pinks, yellows, greens and blues.

He has also helped to create a piece of music for trombones, horns, trumpets and gong that will swirl around Salisbury Plain, and is looking forward to a slice of the giant spiced marbled apple cake that has been baked based on an Edwardian recipe to reflect the era when Stonehenge was gifted, but with a nod to Neolithic foragers in the shape of blackberry buttercream.

It is difficult to know what Cecil Chubb, a Wiltshire barrister and landowner, and his wife, Mary, would have made of such activities. They gifted Stonehenge to the nation on 26 October 1918 and since then the Office of Works and English Heritage have looked after the site.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The inflatable Sacrilege artwork has already toured the world. Photograph: Jeremy Deller with Fraser Muggeridge

There have already been a string of events to mark the century but Deller, whose work often draws inspiration from social rituals and history, was invited by English Heritage to curate the actual anniversary day and weekend.

He says there is no reason why a visit to Stonehenge should not be lighthearted as well as awe-inspiring. “It’s a very significant site, but there’s no reason why you can’t have fun with it and enjoy it,” he said.

He is keen to see Sacrilege, which made its debut at the 2012 Glasgow international festival of visual art, juxtaposed with the real Stonehenge. “It has travelled the world, a mobile version of something that is definitely not mobile. There’s humour in that,” he said.

For the new images, he has taken 100 prints of a century-old photograph of the monument and tinted each stone with vivid watercolour. “It creates a multicoloured, vaguely psychedelic look,” he said.

“We’ve given it a bit of colour. It’s the wrong colours, but still. Stonehenge does change colour massively during the day depending on what the light’s doing. It reflects light, it can be golden orange and yellow, it can be very dark grey. It reflects colour as well as meaning back to us.”

The anniversary is a good chance to consider what the monument means to the UK, he said. “It’s a symbol of the nation and you project whatever your feelings are about the country on to it. It might have multiple interpretations. Because we don’t know exactly what happened there, what people said, what they did, it’s open and free and available to think what we want to think about it. It’s weirdly democratic in terms of ideas.

“It represents us but we don’t know what it is. It is a place we can turn to in moments of stress and anxiety to try to ask it for some sort of meaning, to give our lives some structure, to connect us to the past. Maybe at this time of political stress it is good time for us to make these connections.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Deller has used watercolours to brighten up a 100-year-old photo of Stonehenge. Photograph: Jeremy Deller with Fraser Muggeridge

Deller worked with the composer Matt Rogers to produce Of the wonderful Nature of Air, which will be performed by members of the London Sinfonietta within the circle on Friday.

Rogers said Stonehenge was an elemental place. “You’re buffeted by the wind. It got me thinking of writing something that was an evocation of the elements.” He hopes the music will sound like a “humming air creature”.

Susan Greaney, an English Heritage historian, said 100 years ago Stonehenge could have been lost to the nation. “There were rumours that an American wanted to buy it and ship it off to the US. If it had been bought by a farmer they would have ploughed up the surrounding land and we might have lost a lot of archaeological information.

“When it was handed over some stones were in a bad state of repair with struts propping them up. More stones would have fallen in the next two to three years had the conservation project not started in 1919. It was handed over in the nick of time.”

• Sacrilege will be outside the Stonehenge visitor centre from 26 to 28 October. The celebrations on Friday will include an afternoon tea party and every visitor that day will receive a special ticket designed by Deller. The music piece will also be performed. Deller has also produced a limited edition series of 100 Stonehenge-inspired prints that will be available to buy on-site and online. Visit the English Heritage website for more information.