Deputy Mayor for Culture and Creative Industries Justine Simons has unveiled the artwork that will replace David Shrigley’s seven-metre tall thumbs up on Trafalgar Square’s Fourth Plinth in London.

THE END by artist Heather Phillipson consists of a dollop of whipped cream decorated with a cherry, fly and drone.

It is designed to speak to the “extremes of shared experience, from commemorations and celebrations to mass protests, all while being observed by a drone’s camera.”

“When I conceived of THE END, I wanted to take into account both the political and physicals aspects of Trafalgar Square and the plinth. Topped with a giant, unstable load of replica whipped cream, a cherry, a fly and a functioning drone, the plinth becomes a monument to hubris and impending collapse,” Phillipson said.

“I’m honoured to have been selected to make work for such a significant public site, and to be able to see THE END scaled up for its ultimate size and context – one in which the surrounding architecture and its population are participants in a mis-scaled landscape, magnifying the banal, and our cohabitation with other lifeforms, to apocalyptic proportions.”