Projects Resources

Sea Strata

Sea Strata is a permanent work of art for Green Park Underground station by Royal Academician John Maine. The work was a significant and integral element of the improvement and upgrading of the station. Maine was commissioned by Art on the Underground, to develop a unified work for the walls and flooring of all the station buildings above ground.

The concept of John Maine’s work for Green Park station is grounded in the natural world, reflecting the location between the urban character of Piccadilly and the more rural Green Park beyond.

Green Park Underground station is one of busiest interchange stations on the London Underground system. The major improvements to the station include step-free access between street and platform levels, a new station canopy on the south side of Piccadilly over an enlarged staircase into the station, and restructured station buildings which frame the views from Piccadilly into The Royal Park. These buildings provide the principal area for Maine’s artwork.

Labyrinth

VISIT THE LABYRINTH WEBSITE: Project essay, 270 station pages with photographs, videos and archive of the London-wide engagement programme

Mark Wallinger, one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists, created a major new artwork for London Underground to celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2013. The result, commissioned by Art on the Underground, is a multi-part work on a huge scale that is installed in every one of the Tube’s 270 stations. Wallinger sees the commission as a unique opportunity to explore the potential of the Underground as a whole. Wishing to forge a poetic link with the Tube’s rich history of graphic language, he has made a work that sits comfortably alongside the two of its major design icons, the roundel and Harry Beck’s Tube map, and yet stands out as a new symbol marking the Tube’s 150th year.

Wrapper

Wrapper is a permanent work of art by Jacqueline Poncelet, made especially to clad the new building and perimeter wall next to Edgware Road (Circle line) Tube station. The work, created in vitreous enamel, dresses the building in a grid of patterns developed by the artist. Each pattern relates to a different part of the local area and was made in response to the images and ideas that she has developed through her research there over the past three years. Like an enormous patchwork, Wrapper tells the story of the place in which it sits, weaving together elements from local history and the natural environment, the area’s architecture and its people.

Set in the urban environment of central London, Wrapper joins a diverse landscape of buildings, with a mixture of scales, functions and architectural designs. It stands out as a bright and colourful object whilst simultaneously blending in as a new addition to an area already full of constructions of all kinds and ages, from office blocks and houses to shops and schools. A work on this scale could have dominated the area, but Poncelet’s mix of patterns brings a kind of fragmentation to the building that helps to integrate it with its neighbours. In the busy environment of the Edgware Road area, the design also reflects the way in which the building will be viewed: more often in parts than as a whole.

Full Circle

Full Circle is a two-part work created especially for King’s Cross St. Pancras Underground station commissioned by Art on the Underground. It is an integral part of the station, installed in 2009 and 2011 as part of an upgrade project including two new ticket halls.

The work was conceived to be situated at the end of two new concourses, one for the Northern Line and the other for the Piccadilly line. Each of the sculptures reflect the context of the modernised station and its distinctive architectural style and language. They propose a reconsideration of this site and a re-examination of the way the station has been constructed for the contemporary city it serves.

The starting points for Full Circle are the circular end walls of the two concourse tunnels. In both instances, and as is common throughout the Tube, the circle is truncated where it meets the floor, implying a ‘lost’ segment beneath. This segment has been ‘reinstated’; conceptually exhumed by Henriksen and mounted as an integral architectural feature of the wall. In each case, the segment was fabricated by the station upgrade contractor from the same materials (shot-peened stainless steel in one case, stainless steel grid in the other) as the walls themselves. The result is almost incognito, yet remains elegantly obvious.

Learning

Projects Resources

Sea Strata

Labyrinth

Wrapper

Full Circle