The City of London’s free sculpture trail returns

The City of London’s annual sculpture trail has returned to the streets, but sadly, don’t rush to see it as it’s really quite thin this year.

This is the 14th annual sculpture trail, and when it first launched over a decade ago, you could spend half a day traipsing around the eastern half of the City looking out for the artworks. There was something quite exciting about the anticipation of turning a corner, not quite knowing what the artwork you’re about to stumble upon will look like.

However, over the past couple of years, the temporary art collection has been shrinking and is now a very pale shadow of its origins. It doesn’t help that they also keep including artworks from previous years or that they’ve bought as permanent displays, so the trail is about half what you’ve already seen before and half the new stuff.

The art trail is designed to encourage people to visit the City, but to make a trip into the City worthwhile, the trail needs to last longer than a cup of coffee takes to drink. In fact, this year has just 11 works on display (down from 20 in 2019), and only five of those are new to the trail this year.

So five to find.

This year, the backs of the escalators on the Leadenhall Building have been covered in an artwork that’s inspired by the archaeology of the River Walbrook.

Some lumps of stone turn out to have come from the same quarry once used by Michelangelo, but I am not convinced that is enough to turn them into artworks.

An almost very easy to miss cast ironwork by Ai Weiwei near Liverpool Street station is a cast of tree roots from Brazil. It looks like some tree roots, which is what it is – tap it for the metallic sound, but otherwise, it’s a pile of tree roots, and umm?

Four monumentally large flat faces can be found in a courtyard, and are by Julian Opie of a dinner he attended in China.

And finally, a large twisted rope sculpture appears to have been covered in barnacles, as if it had been submerged under the ocean for decades and then dragged up. Maybe oddly, I quite liked its 1970s Doctor Who alien tentacle vibes.

The sculpture trail will be in place until next Spring.