Transport for London’s public art programme will only commission women artists in 2018

Transport for London’s public art programme Art on the Underground will commission a year-long programme of exclusively women artists in 2018. The series will mark 100 years since the Representation of the People Act, enabling women over the age of 30 to vote for the first time.

Artists already on the bill include Heather Phillipson, who in June 2018 will be filling the 80-metre-long disused platform at Gloucester Road station with “a kinetic panorama”. The work promises to be “a scene of avian calamity” exploring the subject of eggs as an icon of reproduction, birth, futurity, overproduction and exploitation. It will feature 3D work, multi-screen video and replica computer game graphics. Heather will also create the Fourth Plinth sculpture in 2020.

British punk artist Linder, known for her collages using imagery from porn, fashion and domestic magazines, will create a billboard at Southwark station; while Nigerian-born artist Njideka Akunyili Crosby will undertake the first commission in a new programme at Brixton station, using the Brixton murals as a point of departure.

Geta Brătescu and Marie Jacotey will create tube map cover artwork; Geta for the regular tube map and Marie for the night tube. Nina Wakeford will also take a two-year residency in the Northern line extension area of south London.

Eleanor Pinfield, head of Art on the Underground, says: “The 2018 programme is an opportunity to bring artists of an international renown to the spaces of our city – not because of, or in spite of, or in celebration of gender. But, because these artists have powerful voices for today and question dominant power structures of the city in myriad ways.”