01. Kevin Francis Gray

Reclining Nude I, 2016
Statuario marble
96 x 215 x 73 cm

Reclining Nude I marks a turning point in Kevin Francis Gray’s practice as a sculptor. Moving away from figuration and classicism, the larger-than-life ‘Reclining Nude I’ steered his new body of work into an exploration of the materiality of marble. While her form echoes the reclining nude form well-known from the likes of Matisse, Gray is seeking to push the limits of the stone and contemporise ancient materials and stone-carving techniques. The result is an art historical trope that has been brought into the 21st century and invites the viewer to engage with the sculpture much more intimately, confidently and physically.

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

02. Do Ho Suh

Bridging Home London, 2018
Steel, plywood, softwood, PVC, paint finishes
Dimensions vary

Bridging Home, London, 2018 by Do Ho Suh was an ambitious co-commission, a UK premiere, installed on the footbridge over Wormwood Street – one of the busiest roads in the City of London, near Liverpool Street.

Do Ho Suh’s architecturally scaled installations are informed by his personal experiences, that recreate specific domestic spaces that he has resided in, expanding on his ongoing investigations of memory, notions of home and migration, cross-cultural displacement and integration.

Bridging Home is a series that Suh has been conceptualising over the last decade. The piece is a to-scale replica of the traditional Hanok-style Korean house adorned with a bamboo garden, that appears to have ‘fallen’ onto the bridge at an angle. Upon the invitation to respond to the migrant history of the East End and the City of London, Suh has conceptualised the first physical realisation of Bridging Home series, drawing parallels with his work and the impact of migration on individual stories, contrasting with the glass and steel architecture of the City of London.

The artwork was co-commissioned by Art Night and Sculpture in the City, It was curated by Fatoş Üstek and fabricated by The White Wall Company, with plants from Blooming Artificial. With further thanks to Lehmann Maupin, Victoria Miro, Savills, Velorose and Wedlake Bell.

Location: Footway bridge over Wormwood Street, London EC2

03. Michael Lyons

Stagnight, 1985
Mild Steel, rusted and varnished
140 x 140 x 108 cm

Stagnight was developed from a drawing residency in Grizedale Forest (Cumbria, UK) in 1984. The sculpture was inspired by strong black and white drawings of trees and shadows, where the light and shade of the drawings are transformed into the solid and void of the sculpture.

The artwork is a play on words and references; while drawing, a huge stag watched the artist through the trees – the title also makes reference to the mayhem of a stag night. The upright forms are based on observation of carts and trailers for transporting tree trunks nearby in the forest.

Stagnight has been shown in several settings – urban, rural, and architectural – and the different settings alter the nature of the work. This is not a big sculpture but has a presence beyond its size.

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

04. Leo Fitzmaurice

Arcadia, 2019
Reflective vinyl, paint, aluminium, steel
220 x 160 x 10 cm

Leo Fitzmaurice’s Arcadia (2019) is one element of a multi-part sculpture based on the conventions of public signage. The works are part of the artist’s ongoing interest in what the he terms ‘information-objects’. His work looks at how these objects are designed to relate to us physically within the environment. With Arcadia the artist has substituted the factual information, usually found on these signs, for something more poetic, allowing viewers to enjoy this material, along with the space around it in a new and more open-ended way.

Arcadia was originally commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where an earlier version of the artwork still resides.

Location: 99 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 3XD

05. Nancy Rubins

Crocodylius Philodendrus, 2016–2017
Cast iron, brass, bronze, aluminium, stainless steel armature and stainless steel wire cable
433.1 x 548.6 x 489 cm

As part of her series Diversifolia– which in the scientific names of plants indicates a single species possessed with a considerable variety of leaf, Crocodylius Philodendrus employs clusters of bouquet like arrangements comprised out of a variety of animal forms that explode into space in all directions. Her calculated compositions employ a structural property called “tensegrity,” wherein individual parts are arranged in balanced compression and secured with tensile cables, that galvanizes the aluminium crocodiles, hogs and deer, cast iron tortoises, and bronze zebras into purely formal, abstract components as they propel into space due to their aggregate momentum. Circumnavigating her towering assemblage reveals the transformation of found objects and industrial refuse into expertly orchestrated abstractions that are fluid and rhizomatic in nature.

Location: 1 Undershaft, London EC3A 6HX

06. Salvatore Arancio

It Was Only a Matter of Time Before We Found the Pyramid and Forced It Open, 2017
Glazed and unglazed ceramic, epoxy resin
160 x 90 x 270 cm, 160 x 90 x 250 cm

Salvatore Arancio’s works, It Was Only a Matter of Time Before We Found the Pyramid and Forced It Open, evoke a sculptural garden in which the sculptures are shaped by forms informed by the petrified trees of the “Lava Trees State Park” in the Hawaii Island, that preserves lava moulds of the tree trunks that were formed after a volcanic eruption in 1790. By using a natural material like clay to recreate the lava trees’ totemic presence and by toning the resulting shapes with iridescent, metallic glazes, the artist’s aim is to create a link to his ongoing fascination about nature as a theatre for rituals, worships and self-induced trance states. Arancio doesn’t hesitate to convene science and make apparent their mystical side decontextualizing the forms that have inspired him and emphasize the strangeness and the evocative power of these natural elements that may recall phallic symbols and esoteric signs.

The sculptures were made in collaboration with the Antica Ceramica Gatti of Faenza (Italy) to be presented at the 57th Biennale di Venezia in 2017.

Location: 1 Great St Helen’s, London EC3A 6HX

07. Nina Saunders

Abstract Mess, 2008
Concrete and stainless steel
78 x 78 x 92 cm

Nina Saunders has been fashioning domestic objects into odd and subversive works of art that can take on various readings depending on the context. ‘Abstract Mass’ is an armchair made of concrete and stainless steel, which begs the question of displacement. In a diverse city like London, this question gains political, cultural and personal significance. De-contextualized and re-contextualized, the work questions the boundaries between public and private space, between domesticity and domestication, between responding to the city plan and creating a ‘situation’. You are tempted to touch it, even sit on it, but upon closer inspection, you realize its surface is rough and uninviting. Is loneliness hard to bear? Does it make you feel small in a huge space? Abstract Mass is a disruptive work that, in its isolation, makes us re-think of the city and its people, of solace and loneliness, of the material that may seem rough but has enormous potential, just like ourselves.

Location: Undershaft, London EC3P 3DQ

08. Lawrence Weiner

Within a Realm of Relative Form, 2005
Language and the materials referred to
Dimensions vary

WITHIN A REALM OF RELATIVE FORM
A PURSUIT OF A FORM
AN ESSENTIAL COMPRESSION OF A FORM
AN ESSENTIAL EXPANSION OF A FORM
A DEGRADATION OF A FORM
AN OBJECTIFICATION OF WHICHSOEVER FORM
ALL TOGETHER NOW

Location: The Leadenhall Building, London EC3V 4AB

09. Leo Fitzmaurice

Arcadia, 2019
Reflective vinyl, paint, aluminium, steel
220 x 160 x 10 cm

Leo Fitzmaurice’s Arcadia (2019) is one element of a multi-part sculpture based on the conventions of public signage. The works are part of the artist’s ongoing interest in what the he terms ‘information-objects’. His work looks at how these objects are designed to relate to us physically within the environment. With Arcadia the artist has substituted the factual information, usually found on these signs, for something more poetic, allowing viewers to enjoy this material, along with the space around it in a new and more open-ended way.

Arcadia was originally commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where an earlier version of the artwork still resides.

Location: 51 Lime Street, London EC3M 7NP

10. Patrick Tuttofuoco

The Source, 2017
Neon and steel structure
268 x 315 cm

Tuttofuoco has proven his skill in capturing the vibrations of social, urban, and collective contexts, sowing public and private spaces with works that have become a part of the urban landscape over time. The neon lights The Source depicts the artist’s hands as he mimes some words conveyed using a sign language liberally inspired by those of youth subcultures.

Location: Leadenhall Market, London EC3V 1LT

11. Shaun C. Badham

I'm Staying, 2017
Neon
550 x 20 x 80 cm

I’M STAYING is a neon sculpture which was originally commissioned in 2014. The sculpture travelled around the city of Bristol, UK moving quarterly for two and a half years, with each location determined by the Bristol public voting online and suggesting new locations. The I’M STAYING project has since expanded and produced multiple artworks, including prints, screen-printed t-shirts, stamped currency, videos, photography, surveys and paintings. Each of these pieces attempts to explore the varying discourse generated from the neon and its movements. The artist will be developing new works while the sculpture resides in Leadenhall Market.

Location: Leadenhall Market, London EC3V 1LT

12. Marisa Ferreira

Series Industrial Windows I, 2018
Powder coated stainless steel, acrylic glass
206 x 166 x 14cm (each)

The artwork invokes Pierre Nora’s notion of “liex de mémoire” to reflect the urban landscape as fragment, memory and vision and to question how industrial ruins solicit affective, imaginative and sensual engagements with the past.

The artwork is made on powder coated stainless steel and coloured perspex and its shifting nature of light engages and challenge the observer’s perception of space and colour. The artwork dimensions present the exact measurements of the existing windows at Sampaio Ferreira – a former textile company in Vale do Ave, north of Portugal, where I was born — and are built using the same construction method of a founded book shelf from the same company.

Location: Cullum Street, London EC3M 7JJ

13. Jennifer Steinkamp

Botanic, 2019
Video installation
Dimensions vary

Botanic is inspired by the garden plans for the Stanford Wildflower Seeding Project and the garden at the Stanford Hospital. A botanical garden is a collection of plants labeled with their botanical names typically housed in an educational context. The flowers are animated with a cubic framework which utilizes the outer edges of the video wall. The flowers are blown by an unseen force causing them to collide with each other and the frame. They break apart into a diaspore of seeds, twigs, leaves and petals. The piece loops forwards and backwards breaking apart and coming back together.

Location: 120 Fenchurch St, London EC3M 5BA

14. Leo Fitzmaurice

Arcadia, 2019
Reflective vinyl, paint, aluminium, steel
220 x 160 x 10 cm

Leo Fitzmaurice’s Arcadia (2019) is one element of a multi-part sculpture based on the conventions of public signage. The works are part of the artist’s ongoing interest in what the he terms ‘information-objects’. His work looks at how these objects are designed to relate to us physically within the environment. With Arcadia the artist has substituted the factual information, usually found on these signs, for something more poetic, allowing viewers to enjoy this material, along with the space around it in a new and more open-ended way.

Arcadia was originally commissioned by Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where an earlier version of the artwork still resides.

Location: Plazxa outside Fench Street Station, London EC3M 4PB

15. Nathan Coley

The Same for Everyone, 2017
Illuminated text, scaffolding
Dimensions vary

Nathan Coley is interested in the idea of ‘public’ space, and his work explores the ways in which architecture becomes invested – and reinvested – with meaning. Across a range of media Coley investigates what the built environment reveals about the people it surrounds and how the social and individual response to it is in turn culturally conditioned. He is best known for a series of illuminated text works that take found phrases (never written by the artist) and by placing them in new contexts creates a powerful ambiguity of meaning. Here the phrase ‘The Same for Everyone’, which the artist first encountered on a hand-painted sign in Denmark, might be read as either a question, provocation, utopian proposal or a statement of protest.

Originally commissioned as part of Aarhus 2017 – European Capital of Culture.

Location: Cunard Place, London EC3A 5AR

16. Juliana Cerqueria Leite

Climb, 2012
Forton MG, steel, urethane foam
366 x 61 x 56 cm

Climb was made from the inside out. The sculpture is an obelisk made inside a tall wooden column filled with nearly three tons of wet clay. Starting at the base of this structure the artist physically dug her way upwards through the center of the material, leaving behind a vertical tunnel. The surface of the clay inside was marked by imprints of her knees, feet, elbows, fingers and hands as she worked her way up. Once the artist reached the top of this column of clay she cast the tunnel she’d made in a mixture of plaster and acrylic. The cast, which turned the negative space left by her actions into a shape, was then excavated out from underneath the remaining clay. Only then was the sculpture revealed for the first time, like a photograph developed from film.

Location: Mitre Square, London EC3A 5DQ

17. Jyll Bradley

Dutch/Light (For Agneta Block)
Re-purposed timber from Chatham Naval Dockyard, Edge-Lit Plexiglas, mirrored steel, steel plate
630 W x 500 Hx 350 D cm

Dutch/Light (for Agneta Block) is an artwork pavilion activated by light which takes its structure from early glasshouse technology. The work was commissioned to mark the 350th anniversary of the infamous Dutch Raid on the River Medway, Kent an event which precipitated an end to the Anglo-Dutch wars. The peace which followed lead to cultural exchange between the two nations based on growing plants under glass. Dutch/Light re-considers the idea of the glasshouse as a minimalist sculpture, a space with potential for both practical and metaphysical growth and change. Created through pairing old naval timbers from Chatham Dockyard with contemporary edge-lit Plexiglas, the work hovers between structural strength and transient transparency – changing in feeling and appearance through the day’s passage. Dutch/Light’s colours – green for the UK and orange for the Netherlands – act together as an indeterminate liquid flag, in sunlight creating a space of shifting geometric colour. The work is named for a key figure in Dutch horticulture – Agneta Block (1629-1704), an art patron and plantswoman who was the first European to grow a pineapple from seed.

Commissioned by Turner Contemporary and Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust in collaboration with Culture Kent.

Location: Aldgate Square, London EC3A 5DE

18. Clare Jarrett

Sari Garden, 2018
Fabric, timber, vinyl
3330 x 150 cm

The Sari is a traditional form of clothing: a single length of material, six metres of cloth, worn wrapped and draped around a woman’s body. This work consists of sari-like lengths, sewn together, hanging from a beam stretching the length of Heneage Lane and supported by its lamp posts. The line of bright fabric is free to move in the air. A softness echoes aspects of women’s lives, of domesticity, of laundry put out to dry, and of subjugation or flirtation. From a distance the splashes of colour give the feeling of a long narrow painting.

Sari Garden is commissioned by Sculpture in the City 8th Edition.

Location: Heneage Lane, London EC3A 5DQ

18. Reza Aramesh

Site of the Fall – study of the renaissance garden: Action 180: At 9:15 am Sunday 28 May 1967, 2016
Hand carved, polished Carrara marble (unique version of 2)
240 x 80 x 55cm

Action 180: At 9:15 am Sunday 28 May 1967 is one of a series of 12 sculptures that form the body of work titled ‘Site of the Fall – Study of a Renaissance Garden’. From research on reportage images of the Vietnam war, a single composition was selected, the image of which has been reconstructed through a process of rendering based on live subjects. Hand carved Carrara marble depicts the subject as larger than life. The plinth is a site-specific design to communicate with the environment of where it is situated.

Kindly loaned by Kamel Lazaar Foundation.

Location: Bury Court, London EC3A 8EX

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

21. Jonathan Trayte

The Spectacle, 2019
Marble, granite, limestone, basalt, powder-coated steel, stainless steel, bronze, cast iron, concrete, reinforced plastics, glass, pigments, nylon, light fittings
Dimensions vary

The Spectacle is an ambitious site-specific installation comprised of seating, lighting and sculpture. Situated in a busy thoroughfare for pedestrians, these striking visual devices perform collectively as a meeting place, or somewhere to pause. Highly stylized colours and motifs are borrowed from the language of foodstuffs and confectionary. Glossy, synthetic ‘skins’ of paint give the work a colourful pop status, a chameleon appearance and an almost edible quality.  The work is a coming together of natural forms and saccharine colours, generating a dynamic physical presence in the urban landscape.

Location: 100 Bishopsgate, London EC2M 1GT