Build anywhere in the City of London and you will have archaeologists watching every move your bulldozer makes, so best work with them. When Bloomberg planned its European headquarters it incorporated the ancient Roman Temple of Mithras in a basement, displaying finds made during the pre-construction dig in a gallery that also shows contemporary art. Now Newcastle-born twins Jane and Louise Wilson have taken a long hard look at four of those finds, wooden posts or stakes that are about 2,000 years old. It’s thought they supported an ancient crossing over the River Walbrook. Are they Roman, or even pre-Roman?
Part of their response appears as a surreal swarming world they depict under two escalators outside another City landmark, the Leadenhall Building – AKA the Cheesegrater (the rest is in a simultaneous free exhibition at Bloomberg Space). The Wilsons have plastered prints on the undersides of its entrance escalators bubbling with brews of sinister life that look like multiple eyes or frogspawn. In fact, these clouds of watery mutants are vastly enlarged images of the microscopic creatures that they saw, with the help of Danish and British archaeologists, inside the four Walbrook crossing posts.
