Transport for LondonAnna Barriball - About 60 miles of beautiful views.
Anna Barriball's minimal typographic artwork 'About 60 miles of beautiful views.' is the latest commission by Art on the Underground to go on display on the Tube network.
Barriball will display a collection of evocative phrases taken from the back of found photographs. Printed in New Johnston font, the texts will be displayed on posters in advertising spaces across the network.
Customers travelling on the Underground will encounter unexpected phrases like ''About 60 miles of beautiful views.' or 'On way to birthday party.' or 'Looking back the way we had come.'. These cryptic texts are loaded with personal memory, yet connect with individual reasons for travel and the millions of private thoughts customers carry with them on their journeys. The phrases are distinctly personal and strangely visual, creating small windows into imagined vistas or glimpses into unidentified personal worlds, open to interpretation in their new context.
Anna Barriball's work often steps between the parallel languages of drawing and sculpture. Her practice produces objects that combine a minimalistic rigour and the attempt to make sense of the world of objects by empirical study. In the context of the Tube this approach will inject moments of quiet contemplation into a busy, working landscape.
Tamsin Dillon, Head of Art on the Underground, says: "Anna's project is exciting because it offers customers the chance to encounter artworks across the entire Tube network. We hope that these encounters result in pleasantly unexpected asides to daily journeys".
Anna Barriball is represented by Frith Street Gallery, London. More information about her work can be found by following the links below:
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Comments
anna-barriball
Does anybody know the variant of the typeface that's used on these posters? It's obviously a version of Johnston, but with little scallops on the dot of the 'i', full stops and so on. It looks substantially different, and slightly old-fashioned, subtly standing out from the rest of the tube signage around it. Lovely posters, by the way.
Joel Morris
anna-barriball
Johnston's Underground font really looks fantastic in this size and it's not often that we get to really enjoy its little oddities. The comments are so pertinent.
anna-barriball
i love this exhibition. it is thought provoking, funny and intelligent. i would love to be able to buy one of the anna barriball posters. any idea where i can get one? thanks
sarah
anna-barriball
Absolute rubbish. I realise that contemporary art can be anything, and take any form, but surely if art is going to be commissioned to be shown on the Underground, it should be in some way beautiful or inspiring - not abstract text written in the same boring, horrible font as Transport for London's, and black text on a white background. Whoever commissioned this needs their head read - or needs to spend some actual time travelling on the Tube to realise that what might make everyone's journey a bit more pleasant is something beautiful. (Yes, not all art needs to be 'attractive'. But if anything needs prettying up - it's the Underground).