The artist who created the latest pocket tube map sought to highlight the unseen craftspeople who design the spaces people live their daily lives in.
Artwork from London-based Rita Keegan, inspired by the changing fabrics of underground train seats designed mostly by women, formed the cover of the 40th pocket London tube map.
This edition is the first to include the new names of the rebranded overground lines, such as Windrush, Suffragette and Lioness.
Keegan said: “Being involved in an art body that’s over 100 years old was really exciting.
“I was interested in these women because quite often the designers are invisible.
“It was important to me to include the unseen maker.”
The pocket Tube maps are commissioned by Art on the Underground and released every six months.
Called The Fabric of Time, the project draws on Keegan’s own photographs of London in the 1980s and the history of the Tube seat fabrics.
Combining copy art, hand cut and digital collage, the piece layers 10 seat designs with a photo of the artist in her 30s at Brixton station, where Keegan first lived when she moved to London
Keegan wanted to bring attention to the artists and designers who create the everyday objects and spaces that most living in London encounter on a daily basis.
She said: “We use a glass, or we throw a blanket and don’t realise that someone must have at one point designed it.
“So its giving credibility to the maker, to the world we live in and the things we live with which affect who we are.”
Rita also said she was honoured to be part of the historic rebranding, adding she was glad the Overground was being made more accessible.
Deputy mayor for culture and the creative industries Justine Simons said: “As the first map to include the new names of the London Overground lines, it is fitting that this cover also highlights some of the history of TfL design.
“It’s a celebration of the artist’s personal story as well as our capital’s rich and diverse history, as we continue to build a fairer London for everyone.”
Keegan moved to London in 1980 and explores memory, history, dress and adornment, often through her personal photographic record of a black middle class Canadian family from the 1890s to today.
She currently has work on display in the Tate Modern’s Electric Dreams exhibit as well as the No Such Thing as Society collection in the Tate Britain.
Head of Art on the Underground Eleanor Pinfield said: “Rita Keegan’s artwork for the Tube map brings together multiple rich resonances, archival threads from the history of moquette design at London Underground.”
