Yayoi Kusama Strings Spheres in New London Sculpture
Located outside Liverpool Street station, Infinite Accumulation is reminiscent of Kusama's stainless-steel ball installation Narcissus Garden.
Yayoi Kusama, Infinite Accumulation (2024). Liverpool Street station (Elizabeth line). Commissioned as part of The Crossrail Art Programme, 2017. © YAYOI KUSAMA. Courtesy Ota Fine Arts and Victoria Miro. Photo: Thierry Bal.
A new artwork by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama was unveiled outside Britain's busiest railway station. Infinite Accumulation, a monumental metal sculpture of interconnected spheres, towers 10-metres-tall over passers by on Liverpool Street.
The work has been compared to Kusama's dot paintings, though a closer analogue is Narcissus Garden, an installation of 1,500 reflective balls that first showed at the Venice Biennale in 1966.
'London is a massive metropolis with people of all cultures moving constantly,' Kusama said. 'The spheres symbolise unique personalities while the supporting curvilinear lines allow us to imagine an underpinning social structure.'
Funded by British Land and the City of London Corporation, Kusama's sculpture is the final artwork commissioned for Crossrail Art Foundation's public art programme.
The project launched alongside the Elizabethan line in 2022, seeking to regenerate areas inside and around the new stations and to improve passenger experience.
The charity has since placed works by nine artists—including Darren Almond, Douglas Gordon, Richard Wright, and Chantal Joffe—at seven stations in collaboration with blue-chip galleries such as White Cube, Gagosian, and Victoria Miro, one of the galleries who represent Kusama.
Kusama's sculpture follows Conrad Shawcross's Manifold (Major Third) 5:4 (2023), which was installed outside nearby Moorgate station in 2023.
In 2023, Kusama became the highest selling artist by value, with sales from her works totalling U.S. $80.9 million. The report from Hiscox U.K. considered artworks made after 2000 and auctioned at Christie's, Sotheby's, and Philips between 2019 and 2023.
Another public sculpture featuring one of the artist's famous motifs was installed by the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens in July. Presented by Serpentine Gallery with support from Victoria Miro, Pumpkin (2024) is a six-metre-tall yellow pumpkin adorned with polkadots that stands out starkly against the greenery. —[O]
