Travelling on London’s Tube system is never a terribly dignified or scintillating affair. While a robust public transport system is a blessing, it’s somehow always too hot down there and you have to try very hard not to think about the London Underground’s own mosquito subspecies, or all that hairy tube dust they have to send people down to hoover up.
But Art on the Underground offers some joyful relief. Launched in 2000, it commissions work from artists to adorn everything from stations to pocket maps. Those colourful lenticular shapes at Tottenham Court Road or the Mark Wallinger-designed labyrinth signs you can spot at 272 stations? Just two of the many pieces of public art installed by the programme in its 25 years. Four new art pieces have now been announced, to be installed or rolled out over the year.
