There are apparently only three statues of a black woman in the UK. One's of Mary Seacole outside St Thomas's Hospital, one's of a mother and child in Stockwell and the third was unveiled yesterday on Three Mills Green. It's called Reaching Out, a nine-foot bronze of an anonymous black woman engrossed in her phone, and has been created by sculptor Thomas J Price.
She's one stop on a sculpture trail called The Line, a project brought to life five years ago by art dealer Megan Piper. Her aim was to place private works in the public domain and she chose the Lower Lea Valley as her gallery. Supposedly the artworks follow the Greenwich Meridian, but in reality they run down the Lea, switch hemispheres to the Royal Docks and then leap the Thames to the tip of North Greenwich. The number of artworks varies because several are only here on loan, and (despite best intentions) they're quite sparsely distributed. But if you're up for bleak riverside, peculiar detours and intermittent art, The Line certainly delivers.
Officially it starts in the Olympic Park, or at least it does now. Originally it kicked off in the middle of Stratford High Street, but the paucity of artworks at the northern end of The Line encouraged Megan to rope in the UK's tallest sculpture as the starting point instead. She counts The Orbit as two artworks - tower (1) plus slide (2) - which on a trail of just eleven sculptures is a bit naughty. Unless you plan to head up one and down the other, I'd skip this first three quarters of a mile. [Distance from the Greenwich Meridian: 800m]
Sculpture number 3 is the very new one. It was the centre of much interest yesterday morning, with the artist giving interviews to journalists and an ITV news crew on this timeliest of subjects. The Deputy Mayor of Newham and Olympic athlete Christine Ohuruogu were available for follow-ups, expressing delight that many of those wandering by would now be able to recognise themselves in the new statue, in a way that the black community almost never can. Those of us who've walked The Line before will remember that Thomas's statue of an anonymous black man scrolling through his phone stood on this very spot five years ago, but he's since been relocated to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. [Distance from the Greenwich Meridian: 400m]
It's another three quarters of a mile before the next artwork appears, a trek which at least brings the delights of the House Mill, Bow Locks and an Amazon distribution depot. Abigail Fallis' sculpture is my favourite on The Line, a double helix of 22 shopping trolleys rising into the sky. Not only is it photogenic but it's also resilient enough to survive outdoors in a remote location watched over by CCTV cameras. Sculpture number 5 appears at the entrance to Cody Dock, the Lower Lea's finest creekside community project. Damien Hirst's fibreglass skin section has alas moved elsewhere so the latest offering is a large blue egg... and that's less cracking. [Distances from the Greenwich Meridian: 500m, 100m]
Here's where The Line goes wrong, geographically speaking. The riverside path to Canning Town has never opened so the only exit is out through Cody Dock into an industrial estate where waste disposal business predominate. Yesterday I dodged refuse trucks, roadsweepers and a cluster of off-duty ambulances, but at weekends it tends to be quieter. On reaching Star Lane DLR station The Line advises you to take the train to the next artwork because otherwise it's a mile and half's hike past nothing an artlover would want to see. I always walk because I enjoy a stroll along rubble-strewn pavements past recycling depots, but I see their point.
Royal Victoria is very much an outlier on The Line, a distant site shoehorned in because it was willing to display public art on the dockside. In 2015 there were four sculptures here, mostly of a geometricbent, but their number gradually diminished to none at all. This year Megan's managed to add a new one... a tiny sculpture of a boy wearing a bird mask, alone and adrift on a raft alongside the Dangleway terminal. It's intriguing but easily missed, and not really worth schlepping all this way for. But next comes a cablecar ride to enjoy, so there's a treat. [Distance from the Greenwich Meridian: 1300m]
The denouement in North Greenwich isn't so much a line as a loop round the outside of the O2. Two of the five sculptures were added for the millennium - Anthony Gormley's Quantum Cloud and Richard Wilson's slice of boat - so have been fortuitously incorporated into the trail at no extra cost. Two have been added deliberately, one a bit fingery, the other an impressively simple roadsign pointing to itself around the girdle of the meridian. The trail wraps up with an obliquely inverted electricity pylon, another lucky adoption but an appropriately jarring finale. Refreshment options are available nearby. [Distances from the Greenwich Meridian: 750m, 550m, 80m, 0m, 60m]
Megan has plans for additional artworks to join The Line next year, which'll keep it fresh, but also (judging by a couple of the intended locations) destroy any pretence of a linear structure. The next to look out for is an audio piece designed to be listened to for the duration of a Dangleway journey, an Anglo-Ghanaian soundscape linking countries on the meridian, downloadable via QR code. The Line is evolving, and may one day find its feet as an art trail rather than a trek dotted with occasional sculptures. I prefer to see it as two criminally-underappreciated riverside walks creatively enhanced.
