A-Z
Gloucester Road, SW7
UH-OH! PANDAMAN
Piccadilly Circus, W1
KURT JACKSON
Paddington station, W2
LIKE THE BACK OF MY HAND
Folkestone station
FELTHAM MURAL PROJECT
Southwark, SE1
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SPACE AND ACCESS are the two principal problems facing contemporary art in London today. There is an answer: the railway station platform is attracting more and more artists and agencies.
Gloucester Road Underground station offers virtually the ideal circumstances. A complete and well-preserved Victorian station with an interior bounded by splendid stock-brick walls with deep coves in them, it has the added advantage for artistic purposes that the north side gives on to a disused platform, so that there is plenty of space for any art, and it can be viewed at a comfortable distance, from the other side of the eastbound line.
At present the coves are filled with a typical photomural by the Swedish artist Lars Arrhenius. Arrhenius is fascinated by the classic London A-Z street map. On top of sections from this he places roundels, each with a simple graphic, often involving people. The roundels are lined up in such a way that they seem to be marking out journeys across the underlying maps. This offers plenty for the passenger to look at and work out while he waits.
The organisation which brought Arrhenius on to the scene, Platform Art, has looked to Beijing for the artist featured at Piccadilly Circus Underground. Zhao Bandi is a photographic artist, and he is apparently obsessed with his toy panda.
Hence the pictures in Uh-oh! Pandaman, scattered around the station like advertisements and creeping up on passers-by before they are aware that they are looking at art. All feature the artist and his panda in various improbable situations, exchanging polite chat in speech bubbles.
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On the most immediate level they are just funny. But clearly the details of the image can be read more carefully, depending how much time you have to spare, and thus examined they reveal a lot about Zhao Bandi’s attitudes towards Chinese state propaganda, Western consumerism and alienation in modern society.
Kurt Jackson’s installation on platform 8 of Paddington Station is at once art and propaganda. Art, because it displays his work in a dozen fourmetre-high (13ft) reproductions. Propaganda, because the whole thing is arranged by SeenCornwall to dramatise the glamour of Cornwall. Kurt Jackson is an adventurous choice, since his Cornish landscapes are as far as possible from tourist-trapping images, evoking instead grandeur and wildness.
All of these are temporary installations. Like the Back of My Hand, on Folkestone station, is intended to be permanent. It all began in a Millennium project that got the members trying to find a Folkestonian born in each year of the 20th century. When the requisite 101 people had been found, moulds of their hands were taken in plaster, and were exhibited along with biographical notes, a photograph, and a recording of each participant speaking the year of his or her birth. This symbolic panorama of Folkestone life has been put into a more permanent form: cast in bronze, the hand prints are lined up on a wavy line of blue mosaic. The effect is haunting, and hopefully any attempt at vandalism will be held firmly in check.
Presumably vandalism is among the charges against the offenders at Feltham Young Offenders Institution. If so, the idea of involving more than 60 of them in the creation of a mural for Southwark Underground station is appropriate. The mural itself is placed on a large hoarding just beside the main entrance. It is a boldly coloured, flowing abstraction, possibly more notable for its good social intentions than its sheer artistic quality. But that, too, is what public art is for.