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Platform For Art: Art On The Underground

by Alex Coles, Introduction by Tamsin Dillon
Black Dog Publishing Ltd., London, UK, 2008
160 pp., illus. 173 b/w, col. UK £19.95, US $29.95
ISBN: 978-1-906155-06-3.

Reviewed by Helen Levin, MFA
USA

helevin@verizon.net

Platform for Art: Art on the Underground is an illustrated compendium of artworks developed for the London Underground system since the year 2000. This includes everything from station platforms, walls, kiosks, train interiors, etc -- to the very design of train maps and even upholstery fabric for the seats. It is an ongoing and highly laudable enterprise because it is devoted to the idea of giving a pleasurable and culturally stimulating environment to its millions of daily riders of the Tube -- something from which we Americans, in particular, can learn. Moreover, as of November 2007, the program began its revision, now called Art for the Underground , with attendant system-wide modernization. From the look of the already existent platforms and the condition of stations, this is the stuff to make a New Yorker (like myself), who endure dirty, dingy and drab, ....well, drool! Unlike the relatively modest inclusion of the arts within the New York Subway system, which is run exclusively by the M.T.A., the Platform project is administered as a collaboration between the London Underground, the Arts Council of England, and Arts and Business. For its projects, it collaborates with galleries, schools and colleges, as well.

The art and artists who have participated in the creation and implementation of site specific works number well over two hundred, offering a highly eclectic cross section of styles. Most, though not all the art, is temporary. Because of the structure of the stations, works may occupy large-scale wall spaces, windows, and kiosks, -- offering an expanded and colorful panorama of changing displays. A case in point is the particularly well-designed and colorful Digital Forest (2005) by Anthony Gross, occupying a large set of empty window frames in the ticket hall of the Piccadilly Circus station. Another artist, David Batchelor created an unusual atmosphere along brick arches behind a platform at the Glocester Road station, with his installation of symmetrical, fabricated, recycled steel forms ( Ten Silhouettes), backlit with handsome colored lighting. A third attractive installation was created by the Brazilian artist, Beatriz Milhazes, i.e. the Peace and Love mural series for the Gloucester Road station. They offer a kind of hard-edge abstraction, pop-influenced with ornamental arabesques. Journey to the Center of the Earth , by artist Gayle Chong Dwan, is a massive wall installation inspired by Jules Verne's novel depicting the strange underground worlds that the imagination may create at the center of the earth. Rich with imagery, the over-all effect is colorful, abstract, and atmospheric. The patterned landscape motifs of Henna Nadeem and geometric designs of Lothar Gotz also lend themselves with appropriateness to the essentially impersonal environs of train stations,-- no easy task. My reaction, however, to those more narrative artworks, like the cartoons, and the photographs, is that they often do not do so. For example, ten large blown-up photographs of women by name -artist Cindy Sherman i.e. herself depicted with intentionally jaded demeanor,-- the Billboard Commission (2003) of the Gloucester Road Underground station,-- was undoubtedly an attention-getter early on in the programme, but may have been less engaging for those whom Dillon refers to as 'new to experiencing art.' Yet, in other contexts, I find her work appealing. Interestingly, projects developed with school children, such as the Soho Parish Primary School's Chinese Treasures, and the project developed by Ella Gibbs and Amy Plant, A Station Musical for Stratford, (2006) Stratford Station, were among the more successful of the recent projects by the Platform.

Platform For Art: Art On The Underground highlights the fully fledged and ambitious programme that brings a broad spectrum of contemporary art to London's traveling public, reflects on London's importance as a cultural city, and offers a bit of historical background on the London Underground vis-a-vis its time-honored inclusion of design and culture into its purview. Bravo to the LU!