n.b. All the photos in this post were taken this week.
The Smudge of Remembrance
Art on the Underground is proud to announce an arresting manifestation of remembrance which will be on display in the run-up to Armistice Day, which is in one month's time. Ghostly poppies have manifested on the front of Tube trains across the Capital, presenting customers with repeated opportunities to reflect and resonate at this important time of the year.
This key project is called The Smudge of Remembrance and has been comprehensively curated to create spectral moments of commemoration firmly rooted in the everyday.
The ghost poppies appear as faint outlines and bleached patches on the front of Tube trains. All are different, the variety of form being the result of diverse artistic choices and complex maintenance histories.
Some iterations are almost complete in shape and remind us of the futility of war but also its underlying strength. Some are less structured and force us to confront the injuries of indiscriminate combat. Others exist only as faint evidence of imperceptible removal, just as the victims of war have been taken from us in cruel and damaging ways. Together they form a cohesive body of art that forces us to come to terms with the sacrifices of the armed forces across a global dimension and senseless loss of life on an unforeseen scale.
One of the best places to see The Smudge of Remembrance is on the front of District line and other sub-surface trains. Sharp grey blotches and grubby blurs have been carefully installed in full public view, halfway between the headlamps and directly beneath the cabin window. Customers waiting on the platform will thus become incrementally aware of the iconic double petal shape as the train approaches, inevitably musing on its deeper significance and perhaps reflecting on how these strange outlines could possibly have been created.
The Smudge of Remembrance is a long-planned art commission and has been undertaken with long-term objectives in mind. Engineers first created a poppy-shaped sticker and affixed it to the front of rolling stock almost one year ago. Their bright red colour often blended in with the front of the train helping to camouflage preparations for the current artwork. The key engineering decision was to use an adhesive that would not fully and conveniently detach from the metallic surface after use, thereby ensuring that scarring and damage to paintwork would be the inevitable result.
Customers wishing to view the Smudge of Remembrance should be aware that it is only visible on select trains on select lines.
Some of the finest deformation can be seen on the Central line where large uneven white fragments were created when the poppy-shaped stickers were removed. "It may look like chemical carelessness," said Alan Bants, TfL's Head of Adhesive-based Detachment. "But in fact we experimented for many sessions to determine the optimal viscosity to create maximum damage on the train's patina and I for one am thrilled by the result."
The ghost poppies on the Piccadilly line are even more numerous, yet simultaneously even more spectral. Initially you might not notice them but look closer and the pallid remnants of the original sticker are always visible, no matter how carefully train maintenance crews may have attempted to remove them. "This is our long-lasting artistic triumph," said Rizwana Hamid, TfL's Head of Sustainable Durability. "Our adhesive has caused such intrinsic damage to the underlying surface that not even a deep clean can completely remove it."
Not all District line trains feature ghost poppies - some have actually been cleaned properly since last year. These roll into stations with a near pristine red frontage demonstrating that The Smudge of Remembrance is not a cultural inevitability, more an institutional choice. But sufficient rolling stock has been insufficiently scrubbed over multiple cleaning opportunities that ghost poppies remain a tangible and ongoing presence across the network, even eleven months after the last Remembrance Day.
"We couldn't have done this without a fundamentally cavalier attitude to exterior train cleansing at an institutional level," said Binky Reynolds, TfL's Head of Budget Optimisation. "One decent scrub since January and all our hard work would have vanished. Instead trains are still rumbling around inadequately cleaned and so our hard-earned ghost poppies remain on view for all to see, delighting and challenging customers in equal measure."
TfL are always keen to slap poppies on the fronts of trains for a lengthy period in October and November because it would be highly disrespectful to our war dead to do otherwise. This focused fervour helped to ensure that last year's stickers were affixed without due thought for how they would be removed, and indeed whether they could be removed, leaving behind visual detritus that lingered long beyond Remembrancetide. A limited cleaning schedule imposed by insufficient resourcing has then retained these leftovers in situ and the Smudge of Remembrance is the result.
Londoners are encouraged to seek out The Smudge of Remembrance over the next few days, and to meditate upon the millions of lives sacrificed to war that these poignant images reflect. Like the original stickers they too were untimely ripped. But best hurry because the next slew of red poppies will no doubt be slapped on soon, covering over the ghostly scars until they too are inadequately removed and the whole messy art project goes round again.
