THE artist who put a sculpture of a pregnant disabled woman on a plinth in Trafalgar Square is to immortalise the model Kate Moss as the new “Aphrodite” of our times.

But far from being captured in a classical pose emulating the Greek goddess of love and beauty, the supermodel is to be cast in bronze practising yoga with her feet behind her ears.

Marc Quinn, the maverick sculptor, originally attracted controversy for his Trafalgar Square sculpture of Alison Lapper, who was born with a medical condition that left her without arms and shortened legs. Now he is working on five life-size statues of Moss to recreate what he believes to be “the iconic beauty of our age”.

The first sculpture, which is eagerly anticipated by the art fraternity, will be unveiled at a gallery in Groningen, Holland, in a fortnight. The series of bronzes will be ready for an exhibition by the artist in America in April 2007.

Quinn, who is part of the Young British Artists (YBA) movement, has already produced a working marble statue of Moss, a picture of which he has sent to the Mary Boone gallery in New York, which is hosting next year’s show.

The statue, called Sphinx, shows Moss, 32, sitting in a provocative yoga position, with both her legs placed behind her head.

The Croydon-born supermodel, who has recently been plagued by allegations of cocaine abuse, is wearing a flimsy leotard and is looking calm, said Ron Warren, the gallery’s director.

“You don’t normally imagine her body like that, it’s not meant to be titillating, it’s meant to show how the body can be malleable,” said Warren.

“It’s not a position that most people can get into, but she does the pose with mastery and ease.”

This weekend, Quinn declined to say whether his statues of Moss could be deemed controversial. “You’ll have to wait and see the figures for yourself to decide whether they are provocative,” he said. “It’s about the twists in the sculptures’ bodies.”

Moss has been an object of fascination for British artists over the past decade. A nude portrait of her by Lucian Freud sold for almost £4m in 2004.

In 2002, several YBAs, including Tracey Emin and Dinos and Jake Chapman, produced works of art inspired by Moss for an exhibition at the Barbican in London called Rapture. Sam Taylor-Wood photographed the model in a Madonna-like pose with a veil drawn across her head. For the same exhibition, Quinn produced a sculpture of Moss made of ice.

The artist told her at the time: “It’s a perfect metaphor for our consumption of your beauty — as the ice evaporates, it will be released as vapour into the art gallery, and people will breathe you in. There’s something so Eucharistic about it.”

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