Transport for London (TfL), British Land and City of London Corporation unveil a monumental new sculpture by internationally acclaimed artist Yayoi Kusama at Britain’s busiest station, London Liverpool Street [1]. Infinite Accumulation is the artist’s first permanent public artwork in the UK and her largest ever public sculpture in the world.
Yayoi Kusama is best known for her use of massed, repeated polka dots, which first emerged in her work in the 1960s and have become one of her signature motifs. Polka dots cover the surfaces of numerous of her paintings, sculpture, and all-encompassing multi-media installations. For Kusama dots express both the underlying unity and instability of the cosmos, as well as Earth’s often precarious place within it.
For this monumental site-specific work, Kusama has expanded the polka dot into linked forms which interact with and define the public spaces outside the new Elizabeth line entrance to Liverpool Street station. These dynamic serpentine arches were created intuitively by Kusama, hand-twisting the wires on the original models for the artwork.
Infinite Accumulation reaches over 10 meters high and 12 meters wide and covers an area of approximately 100 meters in length. Its gleaming silver spheres soar above the ground and are highly polished to reflect everything around them. This dynamic, highly reflective architectural form, mirroring the viewer and the world around it, means Infinite Accumulation responds to both individual and collective experience within the changing spaces of the urban landscape of London.
Infinite Accumulation was co-funded by British Land and the City of London Corporation. It is the final artwork to be installed and commissioned by the Crossrail Art Programme for the Elizabeth line, the largest collaborative public art commissioning process in a generation.
Kusama’s work sits alongside works including Douglas Gordon’s undergroundoverheard at Tottenham Court Road station and Chantal Joffe’s A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel at Whitechapel station. It joins Manifold (Major Third) 5:4 by Conrad Shawcross, which was unveiled at the western entrance of the station at Moorgate in 2023. Infinite Accumulation is located outside the eastern entrance of the Elizabeth line at Liverpool Street station.
Yayoi Kusama said: “London is a massive metropolis with people of all cultures moving constantly. The spheres symbolise unique personalities while the supporting curvilinear lines allow us to imagine an underpinning social structure.”
