Art for east's sake

The eastern stretches of London are home to some of the capital's largest and most accessible art collections, including sculptures by Damien Hirst and Antony Gormley. Carla Passino takes a look at what you can visit on foot

- Carla Passino

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.