15 September 2005 – late 2007 – a 3.6-metre (12 ft) tall, 13-tonne Carrara marble torso-bust of an artist who was born with no arms and shortened legs due to phocomelia. Explores representations of beauty and the human form in public space, and was remade on a larger scale for the 2012 Paralympics closing ceremony.

Marc Quinn, Alison Lapper Pregnant

2028 – hollow equestrian statue made from translucent green resin.

Andra Ursuța, Untitled

2007 – a 5-metre by 4.5-metre by 5-metre architectural model of a 21-storey building made from coloured glass.

Thomas Schütte, Model for a Hotel 2007 (formerly Hotel for the Birds)

2000 – a head crushed between a book and the roots of a tree.

Bill Woodrow, Regardless of History

30 July 2020 – September 2022 – a dollop of whipped cream with an assortment of toppings: a cherry, a fly, and a drone. The drone filmed passers-by and its footage was broadcast on an internet livestream.

Heather Phillipson, The End

September 2024 – casts of the faces of 850 trans people from London and around the world. The "life masks" are arranged around the plinth in the form of a tzompantli, a skull rack from Mesoamerican civilisations.

Teresa Margolles, 850 Improntas

24 May 2010 – January 2012 – a depiction of HMS Victory, with sails made of printed fabric in a colourful West African pattern inside a large glass bottle stopped with a cork; the bottle is 4.7 metres long and 2.8 metres in diameter. The work was the first of the commissions to be relocated and is now part of the permanent collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, London.

Yinka Shonibare, Nelson's Ship in a Bottle

1999 – a life-sized figure of Christ, naked apart from a loin cloth, with his hands bound behind his back and wearing a crown of barbed wire.

Mark Wallinger, Ecce Homo

23 February 2012 – April 2013 – a 4.1-metre (13 ft) tall bronze sculpture of a boy on a rocking horse. Contrasting with the square's other statues which celebrate kings and military leaders, this commission was intended to portray "the heroism of growing up". The statue was unveiled by actress Joanna Lumley who called it a "completely unthreatening and adorable creature".

Michael Elmgreen and Ingar Dragset, Powerless Structures, Fig. 101

28 March 2018 – 2020 – a recreation of a sculpture of a lamassu (a winged bull and protective deity) that stood at the entrance to Nergal Gate of Nineveh from 700 B.C. It was destroyed in 2015 by Isis, along with other artefacts in the Mosul Museum. The recreation is made of empty Iraqi date syrup cans, representing the destruction of the country's date industry.

Michael Rakowitz, The Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist