LONDON///PUBLIC ART GOES DOWN THE TUBE…

October 15th, 2007

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And you thought London only had Werewolves…

London has a long established history of cool public art, particularly in the stuffy confines of its ancient subway system where Pop exhibits like Gloucester Station’s current display, “Life is a Laugh” by British artist BRIAN GRIFFITHS, happily breaks up the monotony of an urban population’s endless commute. The city’s official outreach program, PLATFORM FOR ART makes possible exhibits like Griffiths’ massive 70 meter long assemblage of outsized and seemingly random objects—the centerpiece of which is a 12 foot tall segmented Panda head—that run along one of the station’s unused tube platforms in a surreal diorama that’s witnessed by over 21,000 commuters per day. Given the underground’s notoriously shoddy performance transportation record, though, we suspect installations like these might be more about riot prevention than visual enlightenment…

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POSTED BY J O'Shea/Editor

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