Sculpture in the City 2015

Now in its fifth year, the public art exhibition Sculpture in the City is showing 14 works by contemporary artists around London’s Square Mile

Founded in 2010, Sculpture in the City is a collaborative enterprise between the City of London Corporation (the elected body that looks after the Square Mile’s global business district around St Paul’s cathedral), local businesses and the art world. “The point”, so the Sculpture in the City website tells us, “is to engage new audiences with works by established and emerging contemporary artists”. We spoke to co-director, architect and art manager Stella Ioannou.

This year 2015, Sculpture in the City is exhibiting 14 works by contemporary artists within the Square Mile of the City of London. Some works are in plain sight on pavements and in squares, others are camouflaged in to the surroundings, yet all, being displaced from the usual art contexts of white cube, open rural place or urban site of focus, have a strange presence and draw attention not only to themselves but also to the different architecture surrounding them, from 16th-century churches, to glass towers, through scaffolding clad in sheeting, and construction sites.

Sculpture in the City is not only an opportunity to see engaging works in unusual settings, it is also a celebration of the collage of time, material and design that exist today in the Square Mile, and makes for a place unusually rich in contrast and story.

The exhibition includes works by Ekkehard Altenburger (Germany); Bruce Beasley (USA); Adam Chodzko (UK); Laura Ford (UK); Damien Hirst (UK); Shan Hur (Korea); Folkert de Jong (Netherlands); Sigalit Landau (Israel); Kris Martin (Belgium); Keita Miyazaki (Japan); Tomoaki Suzuki (Japan); Xavier Veilhan (France); and Ai Weiwei (China).

Sculpture in the City 2015
City of London, London
September 2015 – May 2016

Interview by MK PALOMAR
Filmed by MARTIN KENNEDY