01. Alice Channer

Burial, 2016
Sand-Cast Corten Steel
80 x 107 x 237 cm (each rock)

The rough dimensions of the two stretched rocks that make up Burial are approximately the length of an average-ish elongated, horizontal human body. The hollow forms of the rocks, positioned as if in a mourning procession, are similar in form to upturned sarcophagae. The sculpture imagines these sarcophagae as exoskeletons, hollow hard shells made to hold soft bodies whilst they are changing state. The rocks were cast from lumps of concrete the artist collected from London demolition sites as evidence of the changing materiality of the city. Made from Corten steel, their forms appear strangely organic, despite having been produced by the technological and industrial processes of scanning, stretching, milling and casting.

Location: St Botolph without Bishopsgate Churchyard, London EC2M 3TL

02. Emma Louise Moore

Miss, 2021
Carrara Marble
150 x 220 cm

Emma Louise Moore’s piece, carved from Carrara marble, becomes translucent when penetrated by the sun, making the passing of time tangible. Deep within the landscape of the city, sunlight bounces endlessly between reflective surfaces. The surrounding buildings create passing shadows and moments of inactivity, allowing the illumination of the work to be ephemeral, its activation by the sun a momentary phenomenon.

Moore’s sculptures create a space that asks us to pause and observe. Taunting our instantaneous expectations. The sun becomes the artist, dictating when the work is activated and dormant. These pieces are created in a place of servitude, a return to sun-worship, a deeper notion of time.

Location: Corner of Bishopsgate and Wormwood Street, London EC2M 3XD

03. Victor Lim Seaward

Nest Series, 2022
Enamel and epoxy resin on 3D printed PETG
Dimensions vary

Taking the form of imagined phantasmagorical fruits, these artworks by Victor Lim Seaward function simultaneously as aesthetic sculptures and functional bird nests. The nests are sculpted using digital software and fully 3D printed in a durable material called PETG, before being painted in enamel.

Conceived to attach to trees and blend in with the seasonal foliage, the sculptures have been designed in accordance with RSPB guidelines to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for nesting. The internal cavity is insulated to provide warmth during cold snaps, drainage holes have been incorporated in case of heavy rain, and sustainable coconut hemp is used as nesting material.

Location: Tree outside 99 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3XD

04. Mike Ballard

Rough Neck Business, 2019
Found wooden hoardings
331 x 243 x 290 cm

Rough Neck Business is made up of hoardings sourced from several sites across London. They include green hoardings from the Olympic Park, and blue hoardings from Dalston and Hackney Wick. All of these sites have seen great changes over recent years, and have been surrounded by hoardings for quite some time.

As with all of the artist’s sculptures, Mike Ballard is interested in taking this material, that normally represents a threshold of ownership and protection of property, and transforming it from sheet form into a 3d structure of its own, to be admired for its un-painterly qualities and the ‘witness marks’ of the time it stood on the street.

Location: 100 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 1GT

05. Oliver Bragg

In Loving Memory, 2020
Seven etched brass plaques
100 x 50 cm

This project focuses on the everyman, the natural environment and memories to place and memory itself. A series of engraved brass bench plaques have been installed to existing benches around the City of London. The plaques have been created to mimic the plaques that often adorn benches to memorialise or pay homage to a specific person. These, however, are fabricated: in loving memory of a ‘made up’ person or place or abstract idea.

Some of them are optimistic for a better future others long for a forgotten past. Some are more fantastical, abstract and others are more direct and perturbing or prescient. Many rely on humour as a way of communicating the idea.

Locations

Following inclusion in the 10th Edition of Sculpture in the City (2019–2021), the artwork was aquired and remains on permanent display in the City of London at seven locations:

06a. Undershaft, EC3A 8AH (next to St Helen’s Church)
06b. Fen Court Garden, EC3M 5DL
06c. Plaza outside Fenchurch Street Station, EC3M 4AJ
06d. Aldgate Square, EC3N 1AF
06e. Mitre Square, EC3A 5DH
06f. Bury Court, EC3A 8EX
06g. Jubilee Gardens, EC2M 4WD

06. Ugo Rondinone

Summer Moon, 2011
Cast aluminium, white enamel
600 x 550 x 550 cm

Ugo Rondinone’s Summer Moon, 2011 belongs to a long-running series of sculptures of trees. From the mid-2000s Rondinone has embarked on a series of life-size sculptures of ancient olive trees in white-painted aluminium.

The artist noted in 2006: "Through a cast olive tree you can not only experience the lapse of real time, that is lived time, frozen in its given form, but through this transformation also a different calibrated temporality. Time can be experienced as a lived abstraction, where the shape is formed by the accumulation of time and wind force."– Ugo Rondinone

Location: Undershaft, London EC3A 8AH

07. Sarah Lucas

Sandwich, 2011–2020
Concrete
60 x 244 x 190 cm

Sarah Lucas’s recent large-scale sculpture, Sandwich (2011–2020), stands in opposition to traditional public sculpture. Its horizontal configuration opposes veneration and pomposity through its prosaic absurdity and functional accessibility. Mining at themes of British culture, Lucas ambiguously transposes the humble sandwich on a monumental scale with a metaphoric and literal sense of hyperbole; simultaneously satirising and celebrating the commonplace foodstuff as a proletariat symbol. The material austerity of the work in concrete, elevates and inverts the object’s ordinariness with irreverent humour.

Location: Underschaft (in front of Crosby Square), London EC2N 4AJ

08. Eva Rothschild

Cosmos, 2018
Spray-painted aluminium
350 x 370 x 340 cm

Cosmos (2018) is composed of three 3.5 metre-high slatted structures, which lean in to and support each other, painted black on the exterior and sprayed in a coloured gradient within. An imposing physical structure, the work encourages both a physical and aesthetic response. Says Rothschild: “The external piece is quite forbidding. Its black shiny surface is like a set of disruptive gates.”

Frequently Rothschild’s works demand the viewer to navigate their own presence in proximity to the work and the architecture of the surroundings. This work serves as a spatial interruption or threshold, reorienting the passage and behaviour of the viewer. As a mise-en-scene or backdrop for performance, Rothschild’s installations also invite the idea of the chance encounter, as spaces in which to reflect, watch, dream and act.

Location: St Helens (between Aviva and The Leadenhall Buidling), London EC3P 3DQ

09. Emma Smith

We, 2019
Neon
1160 x 80 x10 cm

A neon text work highlights the precarious nature of relationship and the easy slippage between states of togetherness and isolation. The artwork reads WE ARE ALL ONE. The first letter "L" in the word "ALL" is set to flicker as if faulty, meaning the work is in constant flux between the statements "WE ARE ALL ONE" and "WE ARE ALONE". While offering two seemingly contrasting texts through the same sign the work also offers a paradox: that if we are all "one", one is a multitude, and if "we" are alone, to be alone is a shared experience.

The artwork is inspired by Jean-Luc Nancy’s suggestion that we come into being through relationship and his counter proposal of "we are" to the assertion "I am". Commissioned by The Fitzwilliam Museum in 2019, the piece was developed following a year-long project working with Cambridge residents to reflect on what it means to be a "we". The poignancy of the work shifts with its social and political context building layers of association and resonance.

Location: The Leadenhall Building, London EC3V 4ABR

10. Claudia Wieser

Generations (Part 2), 2022
Vinyl
Dimensions vary

Wieser’s site specific wallwork for The Leadenhall Building weaves various narratives—fictive, biographical, historical—into a backdrop that functions like a stage, encouraging the viewer to consider his or her place in time at the center of a great human drama that unfolds recurrently and relentlessly.

Situated in the City of London, whose history goes back to the Roman Empire, the arc is spanned from the ancient past to the present day. Collaged together from her vast archive, the combination of textures, architecture elements, representatives of the past and the present, the layer of real people passing by automatically becomes part of the image cycle.

Location: The Leadenhall Building, London EC3V 4ABR

11. Shezad Dawood

Invasion, 2019
Neon
198 x 186 cm

Invasion (2019) is a part of Shezad Dawood’s Encroachments, a series that takes an oblique look at the relations between Pakistan and the US since partition in 1947. The work explores video games as Cold War propaganda, building on an earlier use of science fiction films to fulfil the same function. An invading monster emerges from the arcade into the public realm and takes the form of a neon sculpture, reminiscent of characters in video games fighting off the ‘other’, represented as a kind of boogeyman. The neon addresses the space that exists at the corner of our eyes, where images – from moments in childhood video games to wartime scenes – blend into each other, flickering between reality and fiction.

Location: Leadenhall Market, London EC3V 1LT

12. Guillaume Vandame

Symbols, 2019–2021
Flags
Dimensions vary

Symbols (2019-2021) is a sculptural installation consisting of 30 unique flags from the LGBTQ+ community. Spanning the original Pride Flag designed by Gilbert Baker in San Francisco in 1978 to its newest iteration by Daniel Quasar in 2018, the flags represent the diversity of gender, sexuality, and desire. The flags are standardised and ordinary, each five feet by three feet, and hang equidistant to represent the equal value and potential each community group has in the world today.

Following the recent death of Baker in 2017 and President Trump’s banning of the Pride Flag at U.S. embassies internationally, alongside the global absence of Pride during the pandemic and increased hostility and violence towards the LGBTQ+ community, symbolscelebrates the joy and freedom to love who you love while acknowledging the struggles these community groups have endured to gain visibility, human rights, and equality.

Location: Beehive Passage, Leadenhall Market, London EC3V 1LT

13. Bram Ellens

Orphans, 2018–2020
Discarded paintings
80 x 80 x 120 cm, 140 x140 x 200 cm, 170 x 160 x 250 cm

In the Orphans, we see how the artist collected old paintings from deceased people to give them a new life. Through undertakers and thrift stores, he managed to lay his hands on paintings that had become “orphaned” after their owner died and the art was discarded by their heirs. All of these paintings that ended up in damp storage basements longing for a new owner, contained both the energy of the original artist as well as the attachment of the deceased owner.

The spirituality of the shape of the Orphans and timelessness of the used material, combined with the ‘family constellation’ of the installation evoke a feeling of resignation and inner silence to the public.

Location: Cullum Street, London EC3M 7JJ

14. Jun T. Lai

Bloom Paradise, 2019
Stainless steel, FRP, Painting

Jun T. Lai created Bloom Paradise to symbolise hope and love. The artist’s intention was to bring greater positivity into the pandemic stricken world and release healing energy. This artwork reflects the contemporary global cultural value of diversity and heterogeneity.

The work is composed of the “Flower of Hope,” the “Flower of the Sky,” and the “Flower of Life” – a transformation of the spirit and metaphor of a lotus into a three-dimensional sculpture. From pollution to purification, from death to regeneration, the lotus reveals nature’s life cycle. The bright and colourful flowers call to an imaginative world, leading the visitor into a fantasy wonderland. Through this work, the artist hopes to bring positive energy and joy, a gift of life, to everyone.

Bloom Paradise is featured with the support of the Ministry of Culture, Taiwan and Cultural Division at the Taipei Representative Office in the UK.

Location: Piazza outside Fenchurch Street Station, London EC3M 4AJ

15. Jocelyn McGregor

Earthing, 2022
Stone, painted Jesmonite, bronze, steel

Earthing is a tactile public sculpture and the first Sculpture in the City Aldgate Square Commission. It acts like a fantastical magnifying glass to explore interconnections between the synthetic and organic worlds in urban spaces, with the human body as the conduit between the two. The title references activities that reconnect you with the earth, and the form and materials are inspired by a crumbling mountain-top dry-stone shelter inhabited by imagined animal/human hybrids.

The Sculpture in the City Aldgate Square Commission is delivered in partnership with Aldgate Connect BID and the City of London Corporation’s Destination City programme. It launched as part of Sculpture in the City 11th edition.

Location: Aldgate Square, London EC3N 1AF (next to St Botolph without Aldgate Church)

16. Victor Lim Seaward

Nest Series, 2022
Enamel and epoxy resin on 3D printed PETG
Dimensions vary

Taking the form of imagined phantasmagorical fruits, these artworks by Victor Lim Seaward function simultaneously as aesthetic sculptures and functional bird nests. The nests are sculpted using digital software and fully 3D printed in a durable material called PETG, before being painted in enamel.

Conceived to attach to trees and blend in with the seasonal foliage, the sculptures have been designed in accordance with RSPB guidelines to ensure a safe and comfortable environment for nesting. The internal cavity is insulated to provide warmth during cold snaps, drainage holes have been incorporated in case of heavy rain, and sustainable coconut hemp is used as nesting material.

Locations: Tree outside 99 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3XD and Aldgate Square (next to The Aldgate School), London EC3N 1AF

17. Pedro Pires

Habitat, 2021
Iron
265 x 250 x 72 cm

Habitat is a word that describes an ecological system that is in balance – where an animal, plant or other organism inhabits. It was important for the artist to choose a title that could guide the viewer to look at the sculpture in an ecological, environmental and sustainable context.

The artist seeks to address the ecological imbalance that exists in our ERA, which began with the industrial revolution, that has been becoming more complex in the last century and which continues to worsen in the beginning of the 21st century. The decline of this balance is ongoing and, in the future, could have a final impact on our species and the planet itself.

Location: Mitre Square, London EC3A 5DH

18. Jesse Pollock

The Granary, 2021
Powder coated steel
353 x 275 x 265 cm

The Granary is a life-sized sculpture of a traditional English grain store. Still in use in countryside locations such as the artist’s hometown in Faversham, Kent, granaries are an archetypal structure of agrarian and pastoral life.

Towering at an unusual height, The Granary is finished in pearlescent candy orange, chosen to represent the desire to return to an idyllic, rose-tinted past. Despite its indulgence to this fantasy, The Granary is also a beaten, forced and frustrated product. It reflects a brutal reality of material hardship, discord, class division and racism, as well as the fear and uncertainty of what we have lost or stand to lose from crises affecting rural life today. The Granary speaks as much to a need to overcome these crises as it does to the vexed rhetoric that underpins established visions of the nation, its heritage and our place within it.

Location: Cunard Place, London EC3A 5AR

19. Bosco Sodi

Untitled, 2013
Bronze
312 x 120 x 120 cm

When Bosco Sodi was a child playing on the beach he would pour drops of wet sand on top of one another to create unpredictable organic forms. Inspired by these early sculptures, Sodi began to collect the leftover materials from his paintings (sawdust mixed with pigment and white glue). Layering these studio residues on top of eachother, day after day, year after year, they began to resemble something like the stalagmites in ancient caves.

In 2012 Hurricane Sandy hit New York and Sodi’s studio was flooded with 6 feet of water. Everything was destroyed except for the sawdust stalagmites. Unsure of how the deterioration caused by polluted salt water would progress, Sodi quickly decided to cast each one in bronze, destroying the original in the process. These unique sculptures are the only pieces of art that survived the terrible impact Hurricane Sandy. They carry a story of creation and destruction, of time and the cyclical tendencies in nature. They offer hope in the face of the devastating consequences of climate change.

Location: 70 St Mary Axe, London EC3A 8BE

20. Elisa Artesero

The Garden of Floating Worlds, 2017
Clear acrylic and blue neon glass
50 x 50 cm base, 200 cm height

The Garden of Floating Words is a neon poem that appears to be floating in the darkness from within the foliage of the garden planter. During the daytime, the words are revealed to be on tall rectangular clear acrylic stands, their structure echoing the tall glass buildings surrounding the garden space, but at night the words alone become the main feature. Using neon, a light source traditionally associated with the city, Artesero creates something ephemeral to make a space for quiet contemplation within the busy complex.

The work was first commissioned by Canary Wharf Group for the Winter Lights Festival 2017. Following inclusion in the 9th Edition of Sculpture in the City, the artwork now resides permanently at 70 St Mary Axe.

Location: 70 St Mary Axe, EC3A 8BE