Two major cities launch public art projects for underground commuters

(All rights reserved / Art Below)

Thousands of commuters in London and Tokyo will have their monotonous daily journeys enlivened with large projections and artworks that take over the platform walls and billboards.

The underground interventions are run by UK art organization Art Below and celebrate five years of art in public spaces.

For the first time ever, Art Below will take over the digital media space in London's Underground with an exhibition called Art in Motion. The public art exhibition features the works of artists such as architectural designer Francis Terry, former Gorillaz drummer and VJ Remi Kabaka, and Tank.TV artist Max Hattler.

The short films are projected on a 2m-high x 3.7m-wide digital screen and feature the artists in their studios and workplaces demonstrating the various ways in which they create their own works of art.

In addition to the HD art projections, poster space in major stations throughout London's underground will be overtaken with artworks throughout April.

Six thousand miles across the globe, commuters in Tokyo's Shibuya station will be transported to Antarctica as London-based artist Nasser Azam covers a 16 meter-long billboard in the subway with images from his Antarctica series.

"I wanted to expose the desolate, silent, spacious and empty environment of the South Pole in a diametrically opposite and probably the most crowded, hectic, busy and noisy space in the world," said Azam.

The Art in Motion launch event will be held at the Future Gallery in Covent Garden, London, on April 19 and will feature the Art in Motion showreel alongside paintings by Johan Andresson.

Art in Motion will run until Monday, April 25 on the Westbound Central line platform at Liverpool Street in London.

Azam's "Antarctica" will be shown on the Ginza line platform in Shibuya Tokyo until April 25. A time-lapse film of the Tokyo-based artwork will be simultaneously streamed to London's Liverpool Street Station tube station and also viewable on the web at http://www.artbelow.org.uk/artists/nasserazam.

The full list of featured Art in Motion artists and a selection of their films can be seen at http://www.artbelow.org.uk/artists/artinmotion.