New design for Tube map cover by artist Cornelia Parker

Underground Abstract - Cornelia Parker

Artist Cornelia Parker’s new art work, ‘Underground Abstract’, commissioned by LU’s art programme Art on the Underground will be displayed on the front cover of millions of Pocket Tube maps from January 2008 for six months.

‘Underground Abstract’, which will be available for LU customers to pick up from stations, takes the form of a ‘Rorschach blot’ – a symmetrical image made by applying paint to a piece of paper then folding it in half, often used by psychoanalysts to map their patients’ emotional states.

The work plays on the idea of maps, orientation and image association - Cornelia Parker has used the colours of the different Underground lines from Harry Beck’s iconic Tube map to create a new symbol for the front cover of the pocket Tube map. Customers will begin to recognise many other shapes and forms in Parker’s art work and can while away their journeys making these visual associations.

The image also conjures up other connections with the long history of the design of the LU map, including David Booth’s 1986 poster The Tate Gallery By Tube (which depicts a tube of paint squeezed out to create the coloured lines of the Underground) and the very earliest LU maps in which stations appeared as large blobs of colour along the lines.

Parker’s work is the latest in a long series of commissions by Art on the Underground for the Pocket Tube Map cover. These have included works by some of Britain’s most exciting artists, including Jeremy Deller, David Shrigley, Liam Gillick and Gary Hume. Each artist responds to the challenge of incorporating the familiar colours and lines of the iconic Underground map into the work.