Big blue cockerel comes to roost on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square

The latest resident of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, a giant blue cockerel, has been unveiled.

German artist Katharina Fritsch’s 4.7m high sculpture entitled Hahn/Cock will lay for 18 months in the northwest corner of the square.

In the video below, Fritsch talks about her inspiration and says: "I'm a very visual person..the ideas pop out up each day".

She also adds that she believes "people will get it immediately as an image without knowing so much about it".

In recent years, the plinth has become home to a variety of innovative artworks:

2012- July 2013: Elmgreen and Dragset's Powerless Structures Fig. 101

The most recent resident was a giant bronze sculpture of a boy astride a rocking horse.

2010 - 2012: Yinka Shonibare’s Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle

Yinka Shonibare's "Nelson's ship in a bottle" commemorated the Battle of Trafalgar.

2009: Antony Gormley's One and Other

Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 consecutive days, different people occupied the plinth as part of Antony Gormley's One and Other.

2007 - May 2009: Thomas Schütte's Model for a Hotel

Thomas Schütte's Model for a Hotel was an architectural model of a 21-storey building. It was constructed in red, yellow and blue glass and weighed over 8 tonnes.

*2005 - 2007: Marc Quinn's Alison Lapper Pregnant *

Mark Quinn's sculpture was a portrait of British artist Alison Lapper when she was 8½ months pregnant. She has the medical condition phocomelia, a growth defect associated with the drug thalidomide.