"my lady"

This large white marble sculpture has recently appeared in Cavendish Square gardens. It's called "my lady" and has been created by the London artist Andy Elton. Its showing, for a limited period, has been supported by Westminster Council and Q Park, who run car parking facilities beneath the square. According to Andy Elton's wife, theatre producer Jenny King, the piece attracted widely differing views when it was unveiled. The gardener of the square commented immediately post-unveiling that the sculpture was rubbish. It seems the artist was not phased by this criticism. A little girl aged about 8 or so couldn't take her eyes off it, and really "got something" about it. Finally, a street cleaner remarked that it reminded him of some of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brâncuși's work, shook Andy Elton's hand and said it was a privilege to meet an artist. It turned out that the street cleaner was Romanian himself.

I reacted in much the same way as the little girl when I first saw "my lady" in the square yesterday, and couldn't stop looking at it. I feel as if she is trying to struggle into being - almost literally being born naked as if from an egg - out of the block of marble. I could find no critics' reviews or quotes from the artist about it on the internet, so the meaning of the sculpture is entirely open to personal interpretation.