Tube passengers to catch mobile gallery

Works by 42 artists feature in the project

Famous names from the world of art, fashion and music are to have their paintings and sketches displayed on the London Underground.

"Art-Tube 01" will be shown in all six carriages on the Piccadilly Line tube train from 1 November.

Throughout November each carriage will carry two visual panels from seven artists.

Among the 42 artists taking part are Yoko Ono, Juergen Teller, Paul Simonon, Colin Self, Vivienne Westwood, John Dunbar, Faisal Abdu'Allah, and Damien Hirst.

Original works

The newly-created pieces of art are in a variety of media and include painting, photography and fashion.

The exhibition has been brought together by Canadian-born pop artist Gordon McHarg.

Damien Hurst's artwork will get a wide audience

He said the carriages would be mobile art galleries travelling 45 miles through London on each journey along the line.

Mr McHarg said: "The only requirements the contributors were given was that they had to create two pieces, and all of them would be the same size so they would fit in the ad spaces."

The idea has been developed from an exhibition of purpose-built panels of Mr McHarg's childhood drawings which he displayed on Vancouver's bus system.

Works include variations by Aidan Hughes on the old London Transport posters, white panels by Yoko Ono, video stills by Joe Rush, and poems by Colin Self.

The art-tube will run through the 52 stations on the line between Cockfosters and Heathrow or Uxbridge.

'Enhance journeys'

There are 76 trains on the line at peak times, meaning Piccadilly passengers will have a 1.3% chance of catching the art carriages.

A spokesman for London Underground said: "It is a wonderful extension of our platform art projects.

"It will liven up people's journeys, and I'm sure that thousands of people who would never normally go anywhere near an art gallery will benefit from it."

Mr McHarg is already curating "Art-Tube 02" and plans to take it onto other underground systems around the world in 2002.