Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Art on the Underground: 60 miles of beautiful views (Anna Barriball)
Keep your eyes open for a new series of artworks going up across the tube network this week. Don't go looking for watercolour masterpieces or ornate sculptures, because this time it's posters. Six different posters. Each of them plain white, with a single phrase in big black text down the middle. Dead cheap, dead simple.
OK, there's a bit more to it than just words on paper. The artist, Anna Barriball, found the phrases on the backs of photographs in an album she bought in a junk shop. The font she's used is New Johnston, the official tube typeface, which is rather evocative. And the posters will appear in place of adverts, so they should make commuters think and/or smile. It's an ingenious idea.
Here are representations of four of Anna's posters (in non-copyright font).
60 miles
of
beautiful
views. | Oh, boy,
what a
wonderful
city! | The last
place he
ever saw
me. | Off to work
8.15 AM.
(Nylon
uniform.) |
Actually that's only three of the correct posters - I made the other phrase up. I'm sure you can spot my fake. That's because generating effortless minimalist art is a lot harder than it looks. Anna's poster collection may look like it was conceived, planned, designed and produced in ten minutes flat, but it probably took a lot longer than that. Probably. Anyway, I think it's a clever concept.
But oh dear, somebody's let the TfL art critic loose, and they've gushed something rotten over Anna's composition.
"These ambiguous texts, now divorced from their original context, hint at personal narrative yet are dislocated enough to connect with the millions of private thoughts customers carry with them on their daily journeys."
They've gushed rotten in that pretentious way art critics do when they use ridiculously complex language to describe what they think you're feeling.
"Consequently these rescued phrases create small windows into imagined vistas or glimpses into unidentified worlds, open to interpretation in their new home."
I always hope that hell has a special artexed concrete corner reserved for art critics.
"In the context of the Tube this approach will inject moments of quiet contemplation into a busy, working landscape. Anna's project presents a subtle yet fascinating intervention into the environment of the Tube."
So here's my unique tube-related artwork. It's three phrases spouted by the TfL art critic, plus a made-up one.
small
windows into
imagined
vistas | cryptic texts
loaded with
personal
memory | inject
moments
of quiet
contemplation | shut up
and let the
art speak
for itself |
I think the made-up one is more obvious this time.
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