Eggs-traordinary Artwork Pops Up at Gloucester Road

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Set of egg related scultures, screens and printed panels takes over disused platform

Passengers travelling through Gloucester Road tube station have been startled to see an eggs-traordinary new art installation pop up on the station's disused platform.

The project, by artist Heather Phillipson, is called my name is lettie eggsyrub.

It features various large-scale egg related fibreglass sculptures, including two four metre high 3D eggs, a huge automated whisk, 12 65" video screens and 16 printed panels alongside oversized suspended images.

Phillipson's surreal, comic, and at times uncomfortable aesthetics cover the entire length of the 80 metre long platform.

The artwork is Art on the Underground's most ambitious project to date, and will be on display at the platform for the next 12 months.

The artwork is a focal point of Art on the Underground's year-long programme of women artists, which forms part of the Mayor of London's #BehindEveryGreatCity campaign - a major new campaign to draw attention to the progress that has been made by women over the past 100 years and champion the achievements and contributions that women make to London.

Heather Phillipson works in video, sculpture, online media, music, drawing, poetry and installation.

Relationships between human and non-human animals are a recurring theme in her work and for this commission she focuses on the egg as an object of reproduction, subject to human interference.

In addition to this installation, Phillipson has created a sequence of images and slogans on vinyl panels that will run the length of the escalator panels at Notting Hill Gate and Bethnal Green Underground stations.

Heather says: "my name is lettie eggsyrub enlarges the egg as a nucleus of conflict. I wanted Gloucester Road station to become a parallel 'scape' - a subterranean disturbance, in which hyper-real, creaturely simulations and analogue counterparts dwarf passengers.

" Using the bold, simplified visual techniques of early computer gaming graphics, both stylistically and as an organising principle, the passing platform becomes a sequence of overlapping vulnerabilities and escape tactics, in which so-called human and avian - winner/loser - roles might reverse."

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, says: "Heather Phillipson is a bold voice in contemporary British art, and her work at Gloucester Road station is an ambitious project that makes the most of this disused platform space.

"This artwork is part of a year-long programme focusing on women artists, commissioned by Art on the Underground, to mark 100 years since the first women secured the right to vote. It champions contemporary women artists in the biggest public art gallery in the world and I encourage everyone to look out for artworks at Southwark and Brixton station too."

Mark Wild, London Underground Managing Director, said: "This is a truly exceptional installation and I'm thrilled that an artwork of this magnitude is on display on the Tube and can add a creative highlight for everyone who uses it every day."

2018 is the 100 year anniversary of the 1918 Representation of the People Act, which gave some women the right to vote. To mark this occasion, Art on the Underground has commissioned a year-long programme exclusively of women artists.

Art on the Underground invites artists to create projects for London's Underground that are seen by millions of people each day, changing the way people experience their city. Incorporating a range of artistic media from painting, installation, sculpture, digital and performance, to prints and custom Tube map covers, the programme produces critically acclaimed projects that are accessible to all, and which draw together London's diverse communities.

June 20, 2018