Moving on in our quest to take a closer look at London on our Walks we move across the dialogue room in Energy and Process at Tate Modern and take a look at two huge slabs of steel that are balanced precariously, one on top of the other.

This is in fact an art work by Richard Serra and it is entitled Trip Hammer.

We do actually encounter another piece of Richard Serra’s work on our London walks around Liverpool Street Station.

He was responsible for one of the art works that grace (if that is the correct term) the Broadgate Development. This work is called Fulcrum and it consists of three huge sheets of metal that stand 55 feet high and lean against each other.

Fulcrum is what is known as “site specific art,” that is it is meant to exist at a specific location. As Richard Serra himself once said - when in the early 1980’s the New York authorities wanted to remove another of his site specific works. Titled Arc on the grounds that it restricted there passage through Federal Plaza in New York City -  “to remove the work is to destroy it.”

Trip Hammer, on display in the Energy and Process wing of Tate Modern, is about the sense of unease and anxiety that it instills in the spectator.

Luckily there is a protective bar around it to protect the work. But it’s also there to protect us from the work, because Trip Hammer consists of two delicately balanced pieces of industrial steel that are kept upright by their sheer weight and by minimal contact with the wall behind.

Both pieces of steel are 2.6 meters by 1.3 meters and the top one balances precariously on an edge that is just 5cm across.

It has minimal contact with the wall behind, in fact it just touches it ever so lightly. The two pieces aren’t fixed together in any way, it is their sheer weight, coupled with the force of gravity, that keeps them upright.

In other words it wouldn’t take much to topple them and the fact that they could fall at any moment makes us aware of the space we’re standing  in relation them.

So with Trip Hammer we have an artwork that combines classical simplicity with a sense of  nervous energy, some of which may well be coming from us as we contemplate the possibility that it could, in theory, fall on us at any moment!

Our next Walk of Art posting will look a little closer at this Richard Serra piece and will tell you a little bit about the artist who created it.

Of course you are very welcome to join us on one of our City of London walks or even on one of our Shakespeare London walking tours that takes in the area of Bankside where Tate Modern stands.