Art Capital: Art for the Elizabeth line

Art Capital: Art for the Elizabeth line
An exhibition curated by the Whitechapel Gallery in partnership with Crossrail
13 March – 6 May 2018
Galleries 4, 5 & 6
Free Entry #ArtCapital

Art Capital: Art for the Elizabeth line opens today at the Whitechapel Gallery, showcasing nine internationally renowned artists and their plans to create major public artworks for London’s newest railway, the Elizabeth line. Curated by the Whitechapel Gallery in partnership with Crossrail, the exhibition brings together sketches, maquettes and prototypes to reveal the artists’ ideas transformed into deliverable public art.

The artists and the locations for their new artworks on the Elizabeth line from West to East are: Spencer Finch (Paddington), Darren Almond (Bond Street), Douglas Gordon (Tottenham Court Road), Richard Wright (Tottenham Court Road), Simon Periton (Farringdon), Yayoi Kusama (Liverpool Street), Conrad Shawcross (Liverpool Street), Chantal Joffe (Whitechapel), and Michal Rovner (Canary Wharf).

Each artist has been commissioned by The Crossrail Art Foundation to create works of art sympathetic to the locality, history or function of the stations, forming a string of cultural interventions across central London from December 2018. The works will be installed in a variety of locations including halls, escalator shafts, platforms and other public spaces.

The Whitechapel Gallery worked with the Crossrail Art Foundation to select Chantal Joffe (b.1968, UK) as the artist for Whitechapel. Inspired by painters such as Matisse and Picasso, she made studies of passers-by on Whitechapel High Street one Sunday afternoon, to create monumental and vividly coloured portraits celebrating local people on the platforms of Whitechapel station.

The Crossrail Art Foundation was founded in 2014 with support from the City of London Corporation with a mission to promote art for the benefit of the public by establishing and maintaining a public art programme that will enhance the journeys of the millions of people who will use the Elizabeth line. This ambitious art project is realised by combining the disciplines of art, crafts, architecture, engineering, transport, civic government and corporate sponsorship.

Iwona Blazwick, former Whitechapel Gallery Director said: “The Crossrail Art programme brings world class art straight from the tube to Londoners and the city’s international public. The Whitechapel Gallery is proud to exhibit the most ambitious art commissions of our age; and to have selected Chantal Joffe as artist for Whitechapel Station where her sequence of monumental and vibrant portraits will immortalise East Enders.”

Terry Morgan, Chair, Crossrail said: “This fantastic new exhibition showcases the creative ideas of leading British and international artists who are working with Crossrail’s architects and engineers to integrate public art into the very fabric of the new Elizabeth line stations. Thanks to the imagination and determination of the Art Programme team, sponsors and supporters, the Elizabeth line will be the single biggest addition to the capital’s public art scene in a generation and will cement London’s place as a global capital for arts and culture.”

Art Capital: Art for the Elizabeth line is presented at Whitechapel Gallery across three gallery spaces, with all nine artist projects illustrated alongside a short film.

The works displayed in galleries five and six are related to artworks planned for Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road and Farringdon Elizabeth line stations.

The display features a taxonomy of clouds sketched in pastel by Spencer Finch (b. 1962, USA), an artist celebrated for installations, films and colour wheels inspired by natural phenomena. Digitally printed onto glass his cloud studies will make up a vast glazed canopy for Paddington station.

Darren Almond (b.1971, UK) makes photographs and texts about geological, botanical and human time. His bronze and aluminium boiler plated texts for the ticket hall and escalator areas at Bond Street evoke historic locomotives and expeditions. A selection of drawings and architectural plans are shown here.

This gallery also includes neon signs by Douglas Gordon (b.1966, UK) an artist who samples film and language to explore the comedy and tragedy of being. His work for Tottenham Court Road’s western ticket hall at Dean Street is inspired by the 1960s nightlife of its Soho neighbourhood.

Rising over the escalators of the eastern ticket hall at Tottenham Court Road will be a delicate spatial tracery of intricate gold leaf motifs painted by Richard Wright (b.1960, UK) whose work echoes the geometric and baroque patterns that have ornamented architectural monuments over centuries.

Simon Periton (b.1962, UK) makes lacy paper and metal cut outs that look botanical yet are tangled with signs of the sinister and the subversive. Hatton Garden’s diamond quarter and the elaborate Victorian metalwork of Smithfield’s meat market inspire his artworks for both ticket halls at Farringdon station.

Gallery 4 (Archive Gallery) features artists’ proposals for Liverpool Street, Whitechapel and Canary Wharf. Conrad Shawcross (b.1977, UK) animates large machine-like structures of metal and wood with lyrical sound, kinetic lights and dance-like movements. He conceives a bronze sculpture that explores the visual potential for harmonics outside Liverpool Street’s western ticket hall at Moorgate.

Yayoi Kusama (b.1929, Japan) is renowned for her infinity rooms and dot patterned images and forms. Her vocabulary of repetition and excess will find expression in highly polished stainless steel sculptures that will confront Liverpool Street commuters with imitations of infinity. They will be situated outside the station’s eastern ticket hall at Broadgate

Michal Rovner (b. 1957, Israel) makes visually entrancing films and installations that look abstract yet are based on the movement of people and places. Her epically scaled digital screen outside the new Canary Wharf station is inspired by its architecture and how it choreographs a dynamic flow of travellers.

Notes to Editors

Crossrail Art Programme

Major works of public art will be integrated into many of the new Elizabeth line stations to create a line-wide exhibition that reflects the ambition of London’s newest railway and the communities it serves.

Together with internationally renowned London-based art galleries and a respected group of art-world representatives, the Crossrail Art Foundation is delivering the largest collaborative public art commissioning process in a generation.

The project falls outside Crossrail’s £14.8 billion core funding. The Crossrail Art Foundation is raising funds from corporate funders, with each contribution being match funded by the City of London Corporation.

The artwork at Whitechapel is being funded by the City of London Corporation, with contributions from Randeree Charitable Trust and the Art Fund.

The Crossrail Art Foundation registered as a charity in England and Wales (1159310) and is a company limited by guarantee (company number 09200269), with its registered office at 50 Broadway, London SW1H 0BL.

About Whitechapel Gallery

For over a century the Whitechapel Gallery has premiered world-class artist from modern masters such as Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Frida Kahlo to contemporaries such as Sophie Calle, Lucian Freud, Gilbert & George and Mark Wallinger. With beautiful galleries, exhibitions, artist commissions, collection displays, historic archives, education resources, inspiring art courses, café/bar and bookshop, the Gallery is open all year round, so there is always something free to see. The Gallery is a touchstone for contemporary art internationally, plays a central role in London’s cultural landscape and is pivotal to the continued growth of East London and one of the world’s most vibrant contemporary art quarters. www.whitechapelgallery.org

About Crossrail

The route will pass through 41 stations from Reading and Heathrow in the west, through new twin-bore 21 km tunnels to Shenfield and Abbey Wood in the east. The Transport for London (TfL) run railway will be named the Elizabeth line when services through central London open in December 2018. The Crossrail project is being delivered by Crossrail Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of TfL, and is jointly sponsored by the Department for Transport and TfL. www.crossrail.co.uk

Visitor Information

Admission: Free
Opening times: Tuesday – Sunday, 11am – 6pm; Thursdays, 11am – 9pm
Whitechapel Gallery, 77 – 82 Whitechapel High Street, London E1 7QX
Nearest London Underground Stations: Aldgate East, Liverpool Street, Tower Gateway DLR
T + 44 (0) 20 7522 7888 | E info@whitechapelgallery.org | W whitechapelgallery.org

Press Information

For more information, interviews and images, contact:

Lucy Hawes, Senior Media Relations Manager
T + 44 (0)20 7522 7871 | E lucyhawes@whitechapelgallery.org

Bridie Hindle, Media Relations Assistant
T + 44 (0)20 7539 3360 | E bridiehindle@whitechapelgallery.org