Hans Haacke’s sculpture for the Fourth Plinth, Gift Horse, installed in Trafalgar Square in March 2015 has been much on my mind. The prominent public location in London, the ribbon of stock prices scrolling in a bow around the skeletal horse’s neck, and the conversation Haacke had with Jon Bird at the Institute for Contemporary Art in March…artist as interlocutor of capitalism, toxic culture, animal relations, monuments. That horse’s skull is the stuff of nightmares.
