Nine site-specific installations for the new Elizabeth Line are unveiled at London’s Whitechapel Gallery

Buildings.

‘Art Capital: Art for the Elizabeth Line’, at London’s Whitechapel Gallery (until 6 May), showcases plans for the public artworks at the new Crossrail stations on the Elizabeth Line, which opens in December. The works are by Spencer Finch (Paddington), Darren Almond (Bond Street), Douglas Gordon (Tottenham Court Road), Richard Wright (Tottenham Court Road), Simon Periton (Farringdon), Yayoi Kusama (Liverpool Street), Conrad Shawcross (Liverpool Street), Chantal Joffe (Whitechapel) and Michal Rovner (Canary Wharf). Each artist was commissioned by The Crossrail Art Foundation to create site-specific works sympathetic to the locality, history or function of the stations, and installed in halls, escalator shafts, platforms and other public spaces.

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The Paddington display features a taxonomy of clouds, sketched in pastel by Spencer Finch, an artist known for his installations, films and colour wheels inspired by natural phenomena. Digitally printed onto glass, the cloud studies will make up a vast glazed canopy for the station.

Darren Almond, who makes photographs and texts about geological, botanical and human time, contributes bronze and aluminium boiler-plate texts in the ticket hall and escalator areas at Bond Street, evoking historic locomotives and expeditions.

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Neon signs by Douglas Gordon, an artist who samples film and language, has made work for Tottenham Court Road’s western ticket hall at Dean Street, inspired by the 1960s nightlife of its Soho neighbourhood.

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Rising over the escalators of the eastern ticket hall at Tottenham Court Road will be a tracery of intricate gold leaf motifs painted by Richard Wright, whose work echoes the geometric and baroque patterns that have ornamented architectural monuments over centuries.

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Simon Periton makes lacy paper and metal cut outs that look botanical yet are “tangled with signs of the sinister and the subversive”. Hatton Garden’s diamond quarter and the elaborate Victorian metalwork of Smithfield’s meat market inspired his artworks for both ticket halls at Farringdon station.

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Conrad Shawcross animates large machine-like structures of metal and wood with lyrical sound, kinetic lights and dance-like movements. His bronze sculpture explores the visual potential for harmonics outside Liverpool Street’s western ticket hall at Moorgate.

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Yayoi Kusama is known for her infinity rooms and dot patterned images and forms, which find expression in highly polished stainless steel sculptures at Liverpool Street Station’s eastern ticket hall at Broadgate.

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Michal Rovner makes visually films and installations that appear abstract yet are based on the movement of people and places. Her epically scaled digital screen outside the new Canary Wharf station is inspired by its architecture and how it choreographs a dynamic flow of travellers.

The Whitechapel Gallery helped select Chantal Joffe for its local station. Based on studies studies of passers-by on Whitechapel High Street one Sunday afternoon, the work comprises monumental, vividly coloured portraits on the station platforms.

The Crossrail Art Foundation was founded in 2014 with support from the City of London Corporation with a mission to establish and maintain a public art programme by combining the art, crafts, architecture, engineering, transport, civic government and corporate sponsorship. The project falls outside Crossrail’s £15b core funding. The foundation raises funds from corporate funders, with each contribution being match funded by the City of London Corporation.