Still from Assumptions and Presumptions. © Stephen Willats
In one of the most ambitious projects to come out of London Underground's Platform for Art programme, two Modernist stations are to be transformed by contemporary filmworks that celebrate 100 years on the Piccadilly Line.
As Londoners go about their daily business in the city, fleeting relationships are formed and judgments made in the distinctively modern environment of the Underground. It is these events and perceptions - the everyday experience of the commuter - that Stephen Willats focuses on in his latest artworks.
Willats has produced three films shot on the Piccadilly Line entitled Assumptions and Presumptions. They will be shown from December 3 2007 to the end of January 2008 in disused station kiosks at Rayners Lane and Sudbury Town – both classic examples of Modernist buildings by architect Charles Holden.
The film footage is split across three screens. In the first, a steady flow of people enter Rayners Lane; the second shows the journey between stations; the third, people exiting Sudbury Town.
© Stephen Willats
The message in the works is conveyed by actors making repeated journeys on the line, wearing slightly different outfits and carrying different objects to signify new roles each time.
For example, commuters will see the same people carrying a tennis racquet, a briefcase or shopping bags, each designed to create a pattern with their recurrent appearance on screen.
Colour and graphic forms will be used to emphasise the patterns of behaviour and to highlight the many judgments people make about each other, especially in this busy environment where there is little else to go on in our decisions about who other people ‘are’.
The latest commission is part of the Platform for Art Thin Cities series, showcasing an ambitious collection of 18 specially commissioned artworks drawing on the themes of Past, Present and Future. Inspiration has been taken from the travels of Marco Polo, as retold in Italo Calvino’s book Invisible Cities.
Other artists to be featured are Rut Blees Luxemburg, Asia Alfasi, Richard Woods, Heather and Ivan Morison and Keith Wilson; all of whom will engage with a different aspect of the Underground line and its history. The works will be presented along the Piccadilly Line from Cockfosters to Heathrow.
To find out more about the Platform for Art initiative, visit their website at: www.tfl.gov.uk/pfa.
