A silver bust of Sir Winston Churchill by the artist Marcus Harvey

When a vandal spray-painted a much-venerated statue of Sir Winston Churchill red, and stuck a green mohican on his head, there was wide-spread outcry from MPs with the culprit serving a stint in jail.

Nearly a decade later, the artist Marcus Harvey has re-created a solid silver bust of the statue as a homage to "Churchill the punk".

In 2000, a former soldier was sentenced to 30 days in jail for defacing the statue during May Day demonstrations in central London. The figure in Parliament Square was also made to look as though blood was dripping from its mouth.

Harvey said the vandalised statue had become as iconic as the original. "It's become a new icon, not a cartoon. I grew up as part of the punk generation, and rather than serving to satirise Churchill, the mohican gives ownership to that generation and underlines his own reputation as someone who stood aside from the establishment."

The bust forms part of Sterling Stuff II, an exhibition which unveils 79 works in silver by more than 50 artists, opening on Monday at Pangolin London in Kings Place, the arts centre in Kings Cross, London.

The exhibition also includes a posthumous cast of a peeled banana by Angus Fairhurst, who committed suicide this year, and a model of a foetus in a kidney dish by Antony Gormley.

Damien Hirst will unveil his latest works since his Sotheby's sale in September, which earned him £98m. He said a £500,000 unicorn sculpture, Grotesque Unicorn, consisting of a swordfish bill balanced on a stool alongside a knife, was in direct response to one of his favourite pieces from the Sotheby's auction, called The Dream, which was a more idealised concept of the unicorn.

The piece, which is more than 7ft tall, features an image of a slain bull's head with a swordfish as a unicorn's horn, resembling a chainsaw. Hirst said: "It's part of the duality that I have in my work, the good and the bad and the idea that you need the bad to make the good."

Rungwe Kingdon, owner of the Pangolin, agreed that the sculpture could be seen as the opposite to The Dream.

The Pangolin foundry has a long-standing relationship with Hirst, having worked with him on his first bronze sculpture, Hymn which was reportedly bought by Charles Saatchi for £1m.

Mr Rungwe, who staged a silver show in 2002, said it was aimed at "representing what contemporary artists are concerned with now".

The artist: Marcus Harvey

*Harvey studied at Leeds College of Art with his close friend Damien Hirst before graduating from Goldsmiths in 1986, was one of the main disciples of the YBA movement in the 1990s. He is best known for his controversial portrait of the child murderer Myra Hindley, created from the handprints of children, that was shown in Charles Saatchi's Sensation exhibition in 1997 and caused widespread outrage. The painting had to be removed after attacks by vandals.