Platform for Art : Life is a Laugh

We all enjoy the art on the wall of the disused platform at Gloucester Road Underground Station in July at Gloucester Road Tube station in London - something to brighten up our journeys on a damp day in the city. We reported on Chiho Aoshima’s work there on PSFK before - and Beatriz Milhazes‘. The latest installation for ‘Platform for Art’ is Life is a Laugh by Brian Griffiths. The new commission includes a 7.5 meter wide panda’s head along with a 1970s caravan, a lamp post rescued from the M42, a pair of painted scaffolding ramps, a heap of sand, a stack of building blocks, a pile of used mattresses and a single bicycle. The Transport For London site says:

For this new sculptural installation Life Is a Laugh, commissioned by London Underground’s art programme Platform for Art, Brian Griffiths has constructed an epic 70-metre long site-specific artwork. Conscious of the transitional nature of both the site and its occupants the work taps into the character of this fleetingly captive audience, exaggerating a sense of expectation tinged with boredom, mental doodling and day-dreaming.

Griffiths’ interest in the theatrical is key to the selection and placement of the eclectic series of objects that run the course of the platform transforming it into a giant shelf-like home to abandoned detritus. Punctuated by melodramatic lighting intended to provoke an ‘activated’ viewing on the part of the audience, scale, materials and shape present a visual assault course encouraging the eye to scramble across the work from one end to the other.

Creative Review have a few photos here.

Platform for Art | Life is a Laugh | Transport for London