Art on the Underground

Art goes underground for the next 12 months. It won’t be too difficult to spot because Canary Wharf London Underground station is displaying a large-scale digital sculpture: Oil Stick Work (Angelo Martinez/Richfield, Kansas) - a 12m x 8m installation on a block wall in the station, for the year - by Irish artist John Gerrard.

Gerrard is one of five artists that have been commissioned by the Art on the Underground project to display work on the Jubilee line in an effort to make tube stations more social and cultural spaces.

The work, which depicts a solitary worker and a single corn silo, carries an environmental message and was inspired by the landscape erosion of the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Developing in real-time, over a 30year period, the projection shows a Mexican-American builder painting a black square on the silo with an oil-stick crayon, from daybreak to dusk.

In 2038 the tireless work of the builder will be complete, leaving a dark building on the landscape. The work carries an ominous environmental message: the projection counts down to a predicated time when American oil supplies will run out.

The light at the end of the tunnel for commuters is a 24hour installation offering a dual landscape: a moment to pause and an evolving travel experience.