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.
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Saw this today — it’s enormous — looks like a monkey’s playground — more of an enticement than ever for people to cross the tracks when tiddly but you’ve got to love the way they ease the pain of changing between the district and circle at gloucester road
July 24th, 2007 at 11:25 am