INFRASTRUCTURE 075
CASE STUDY THE ELIZABETH LINE
Art on the Underground – the subterranean visual culture programme run in-house by Transport for London – has been gently delighting and provoking London tube travellers for over 20 years, commissioning leading UK artists (of all origins and persuasions, reflecting the city’s diversity) to enrich the platforms, entrances, corridors and walls of this vast network. When Crossrail (now the Elizabeth Line) – an ambitious fast-track underground network speeding Londoners between East and West – was announced by the UK Government, it was accompanied by a declaration that no public money could be spent on art. Luckily, Future City, a global cultural placemaking agency, got wind of it and they devised a funding system to support the commissioning of nine striking public art works to go in the key stations, all of which have been designed by leading UK architects.
So now Londoners can enjoy a cloudscape in the glass canopy over Paddington Station’s exit escalators by Spencer Finch, a delicate network of golden-leaf stars by Richard Wright embedded in the concrete ceiling in Tottenham Court Road’s East Ticketing hall (to be joined by a Douglas Gordon film near the exit closest to Soho, London’s filmmaking hub), a glass-scape of tumbling diamonds (due to its proximity to London’s historic jewellery district) by Simon Periton in the transit hall at Farringdon and atmospheric photography from Michal Rovner at Canary Wharf. From spring 2023 there will be a Darren Almond work at Bond Street, and a Conrad Shawcross and Yayoi Kusama around Liverpool Street. The work that most vividly evokes the Londoners of its environment, for me, however, is Chantal Joffe’s work A Sunday Afternoon in Whitechapel – represented by a series of portraits of locals, taken from the streets and underground trains – which bring colour to the seating alcoves of Whitechapel’s Elizabeth Line platforms.
The selection was guided by recommendations from the artist roster of leading art galleries near these big stations, working in partnership with the funding bodies. Once chosen, via an assortment of selection panels, then the artists themselves worked closely with Crossrail engineers and the station architects to execute their ideas. Eleanor Pinfield, head of Art on the Underground, says: ’It’s great to have wonderful works of art by very significant artists at these stations. Yayoi Kusama I was particularly excited by, because there isn’t another permanent work of hers in London. Other artists, apart from Conrad Shawcross, they don’t have public works in London. But I love Chantal [Joffe]’s work. It’s very different. She has a very domestic understanding of the tube, very everyday. She’s clearly been watching women doing their make up. It’s all pretty small scale but there’s so many of them. That’s one of my favourites.’ The art, it has to be said, is beautifully framed by the striking, sculptural quality of the entire Elizabeth Line network – tall, light and spacious tunnels, with interesting curves and contours and a really elegant continuity to the materials and treatment throughout the network (aside from at the stations, where the individual architects can express themselves a little more). Says Pinfield: ‘It’s a once in a generation project. And it shows that good design, great architecture and great art can really make a difference. We now have a network with a lot of amazing art in it.’
Client: The Elizabeth Line Operation and maintenance: Transport for London
Cost: £7m (City of London Corporation £3.5m, fundraising £3.5m) Completion: 2022/3
THIS SPREAD: VERONICA SIMPSON
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