SCATTERED along a curve of the Thames, the Canary Wharf skyscrapers pierce the sky, marvels of glass and metal vying for the palm of tallest, slenderest, most daring. But the real wonder hides in their shadow: more than 100 art installations pepper the estate's stylish squares, fringe its spraying fountains and stretch among the trees of a Jubilee Park remarkably busy with people. This is the UK's largest free collection of public art and a sizeable part of an informal south-east London 'museum' so thick with works that it takes plenty of stamina, a day to spare and more than a little cheating with public transport to view (almost) all of it.
The pieces at Canary Wharf are a cavalcade of contrasts: the small (Victor Seaward's 3D printed fruit, which double up as RSPB-standard bird nests, on South Colonnade) and the monumental (Igor Mitoraj's massive heads at Bank Street and Columbus Courtyard); the abstract (Ottotto's 100 red-light circles, which hug the Cubitt Bridge) and the figurative (Sean Henry's Standing Figures at Park Drive, easily mistaken for real people); the amusing (Stephanie Quayle's terracotta Snub Nose Monkey II at One Canada Square) and the bemusing (Fernando Brízio's Pé de Porco, a huge trotter made of cork sitting on Crossrail Place's roof garden).
On a sunny summer morning, the light plays on Canary Wharf's latest display, a group of 11 pieces that build on six permanent installations to form the 'Summer Lights' exhibition, open until August 20. The show is a triumph of creativity, colour and movement particularly Yoni Alter's 98 giant, translucent dots, which hang from wires to form a giant bird, and another avian installation, Atelier Sisu's flight of multi-coloured birds, which sway in the breeze above Jubilee Park's gurgling water channel.
This story is from the August 03, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the August 03, 2022 edition of Country Life UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
