Fruit Burst Giant Strawberry Billboard – Auckland 2009

As advertising it is close to perfect, because it gives passers-by a reason to look at the same billboard more than once. A static poster is seen and forgotten; one that is visibly bigger than it was on Tuesday turns the daily commute into a countdown. The product was a lolly called Fruit Burst, and the installation simply performed the name.

It is included here as a boundary case, and worth being honest about. This was not a sculpture, not a landmark, and never intended to outlast a campaign – it was an advertising installation with a scheduled self-destruction. But it was a giant fruit, in a public street, that thousands of people watched grow, and the line between that and a great many objects in the tradition is thinner than the tradition likes to admit.

The difference is only that most Big Things were built by people who did not think to specify an end date. This one knew exactly when it was finishing.

Who built it is not recorded.

It also raises a question the tradition rarely faces. If an object's whole appeal is that it is enormous and in public, does it matter that it was only there for a few weeks? The catalogue's answer is that it counts, and that the end date is part of the record.