New pocket Tube map by leading artist Rita Keegan pays homage to Tube seat designs
- Cover pays homage to the mostly female-led designs for Tube seat moquettes, exploring the themes of memory, history, dress and adornment that are central to Keegan's work
- A range of artists has designed covers for pocket Tube maps, issued every six months, for more than 20 years
- Latest pocket Tube map will feature the new London Overground names and colours for the first time
An artwork by London-based artist Rita Keegan inspired by the fabrics of the seats on the London Underground adorns the cover of the 40th pocket Tube map, which launches today (Tuesday 26 November) as part of Transport for London's (TfL) Art on the Underground programme. The map will be the first to feature the new names and colours for each of the London Overground lines.
'The Fabric of Time' follows Keegan's previous works exploring memory, history, dress and adornment, often through her extensive family archive, a photographic record of a black middle class Canadian family dating from the 1890s. Keegan's work crosses and often combines mediums - textiles, painting, copy art and media experimentation.
'The Fabric of Time' draws on Keegan's photographs of London from the 1980s and the history of 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, with a recently captured selfie in her hand. Keegan's design for the pocket Tube Map is the first to contain the new names and colours for the six London Overground lines - Liberty, Lioness, Mildmay, Suffragette, Weaver and Windrush - which will launch later this week in a historic change for London's transport network. Like its predecessors, the map will also show all available toilets on the network.
The work holds multiple moments and histories in one image, bringing a personal record into public view and the significance of place and history. The work focuses on the fabric people sit on daily, an acknowledgement of time spent in transit and the things people may miss experiencing as they go about their habitual encounters. The work also celebrates the numerous moquette designers, many of them women and who were not all credited in archives at the time.
Over the last year Keegan has researched London Underground's archive of moquette fabrics to find a design rumoured to be by the late Althea McNish, one of the most important names in British textile design history, and whose designs included public art commissions and murals. This research is the foundation of Keegan's commission and talks to the connections and relationships of an artist working in a wider London-based artistic community. The pocket Tube Map also coincides with the centenary of McNish's birth. The featured moquette samples Keegan selected were also inspired by the history of design on the Tube and the direction of influential former London Transport chief executive Frank Pick.
Artist Rita Keegan, said: "Being invited to do a piece for Art on the Underground was a great privilege. It has a long tradition and having been a person that has ridden the Underground most of their life seeing art in stations was always the most exciting thing, coming to Britain and finding just the nature of the Tube map is gorgeous. So yes, this has been a great experience."
Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries, said: "It's great to see Rita Keegan's artwork brought to life on the cover of the 40th edition of TfL's pocket Tube map. 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."
Eleanor Pinfield, Head of Art on the Underground, 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, to personal histories, as the younger Keegan holds a recent selfie of the artist.
"This interplay of personal and institutional raises questions; what do we remember and forget, what is kept and what is overlooked in our archives, how does the city shape us, and how in turn, do we shape the city around us, both today and in the future. The work will bring texture to the journey of millions as they navigate their way around London."
James Reed CBE, Chairman and Chief Executive of Reed, sponsor of Art of the Underground, said: "Keegan's exploration of the Underground seat fabrics overtime symbolises the history of travel on the Underground in an interesting way, simply highlighting how time and travel are connected. The nostalgia of the fabric designs will have meaning to many whether visiting from a different country or Londoners commuting to work. Whilst Londoners might not always need to refer to a Tube map, we do love cultural reminders of what makes London feel like London!"
Born in the Bronx in 1949, of Caribbean and Black-Canadian descent, Keegan moved to London in 1980 where she co-founded the Brixton Art Gallery in 1983. It was at the Brixton Art Gallery where Keegan curated 'Mirror Reflecting Darkly', the first exhibition by The Black Women Artists collective. A commitment to archival practices led Keegan to establish the Women Artists of Colour Index (WOCI) at the Women Artists Slide Library in 1985, a unique collection of slides and papers relating to the emergence of Black women artists in the UK in the mid-1980s.
Collectivity has always been present in how Keegan approaches her life and work; a practice aware of its place within a broader history and context and that celebrates the power of community. 'The Fabric of Time' continues Keegan's commitment to holding creative space with others, acknowledging people's journeys and interdependencies.
Textile designers such as Enid Marx, Marion Dorn and Paul Nash Wallace Sewell and Marianne Straub were commissioned by London Transport. Featured in the artwork are designs by Wallace Sewell, Marianne Straub Jonathan Sothcott, Joy Jarvis, Jacqueline Groag and several that remain unattributed in the archives.
Notes to editors
About Art on the Underground
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. Since its inception, Art on the Underground has presented commissions by UK-based and international artists including Helen Cammock, Barby Asante, Monster Chetwynd and Joy Gregory, allowing the programme to remain at the forefront of contemporary debate on how art can shape public space.
Reed, the family-run recruitment and business services company, is the 2024 annual sponsor for the Art on the Underground programme.
About Rita Keegan
Rita Keegan (b. 1949. Bronx, New York) is of Caribbean and Black-Canadian descent and moved to London in 1980 having studied Fine Art at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1969-1972. Her work explores memory, history, dress and adornment, often through the use of her extensive family archive - a photographic record of a Black middle class Canadian family dating from the 1890s to present day.
Alongside contemporaries Keith Piper and Gary Stewart, her practice is a defining example of the ways in which new media experimentation intersect with the British Black Arts Movement. In the aftermath of the 1981 Brixton uprisings, Keegan helped establish the Brixton Art Gallery, curating 'Mirror Reflecting Darkly', the first exhibition by The Black Women Artists collective in 1982.
In 1984, Keegan was the co-founder of Copy Art, a resource and education space for community groups and artists working with the emerging technologies of computers, scanners and photocopiers. From 1985 - 1990, she was a staff member of the Women Artists Slide Library (WASL), where she established the Women Artists of Colour Index. In the early 1990s she was the Director of the African and Asian Visual Arts Archive (AAVAA). Alongside her artistic and archival practice, Rita also taught New Media and Digital Diversity at Goldsmiths, where she helped establish the digital-media undergraduate.
Moquette captions and credits:
All images © TfL from the London Transport Museum collection
Top line (left to right)
Metropolitan line moquette design, artist unknown, circa 1995
District line moquette design (proposed), artist unknown, 2005
Elizabeth Line moquette design, by Wallace Sewell, 2015
Middle (left to right)
Moquette design, by Marianne Straub, 1965
Central line check moquette design, by Jonathan Sothcott, circa 1990
Roundel or Bullseye moquette design, by Joy Jarvis, 1947
Bottom (left to right)
RT-type bus moquette design, artist unknown, 1947
Moquette design, artist unknown, n.d
Barman moquette design, by Wallace Sewell, 2010
Background station image
District line, Jubilee line, Metrobus and Titan bus moquette design, by Design Research Unit (attributed to Jacqueline Groag), circa 1975
In addition to the pocket Tube map, TfL has created a handy Toilet Tube Map, which shows all the toilet facilities across the TfL network. TfL announced in October 2024 its ambitious programme to increase and improve toilet provision on London's transport network, in support of its Equity in Motion plan to make London's transport network more accessible, fair and inclusive. The plan will see new accessible toilets delivered across the network, and improvements made to many existing facilities. It follows an announcement in January 2024 whereby the Mayor of London announced the network's biggest ever dedicated investment in toilet provision of £3million per year over five years. The study is available at: Improving our toilet provision