Art on the Underground: Linear by Dryden Goodwin

One of the things I love so much about London is the way the city embraces art and makes it a part of everyday life. Taking a trip underground can become quite an adventure sometimes. On occasion I’ve been amused and entertained by the odd surprise Poem On The Underground and on those days I’ve always walked away from the Tube station with a smile on my face.

Living near Southwark station makes my Tube journeys even better. The Jubilee line in particular has sponsored a number of art projects over the years, the latest of which has been done by artist Dryden Goodwin. In February, there came up all along the perimeter wall of Southwark station, a grid-work of portraits of Jubilee line staff. The accompanying poster informed me that the Transport for London website had more information on them. After much procrastinating, I finally made it to the TfL website last week and was happily surprised to find that I was already familiar with the artist’s work.

For this project titled “Linear” the artist Dryden Goodwin made pencil portraits of 60 members of the Jubilee line staff, capturing videos of each portrait in process and recording his conversation with the subject while he was making them. The website created for the project has time-lapse videos of every one of these 60 portraits overlaid with an excerpt from the dialogue.

A video still from one of the films taken from the TfL website. All (C) Dryden Goodwin, 2010

The resulting collection of videos is an intimate, intricate and detailed essay on the diversity of the team, providing us with glimpses into each person’s life. Many of the portraits seemed to have been made while the subject was on duty in their cabin, or on the platform. One minute their monologue and response to Goodwin’s questions is directed towards him, another moment their mind switches back to the call of duty as they answer a walkie-talkie call or take a phone inquiry. One hears these very real people tell the story of how they came to work on the Underground, what they enjoy about they jobs, the numbers and statistics they have to keep an eye on – even what they like to do when they get home after the day at work. Watching the videos gives one an immediate sense of the secret working of an Underground line: a simultaneously complex and seamless process that involves so many individuals and runs on the strength of a single team.

The result of Goodwin’s interaction with each staff member is not just the drawing he presents us with, but the video and audio documentation of the process as well. We never hear each conversation in entirety, nor do we see the person’s face whose picture is being drawn, and in that sense each portrait seems incomplete with just enough room to imagine the person themselves. One constructs each person individually and is drawn into each story in a unique and intimate kind of way. This combination of drawing, video and audio captures personalities and emotional encounters in a way just video or photography might not have and therein I think, lies the sensitivity shown to each subject.

I spent hours on the project website and recommend the stories born from Linear to everyone interested in oral histories, drawing, the Underground in particular and trains in general.

Find out more about the project at the TfL website here

As TfL recommends, you can “unlock the video story behind each portrait” here

Crease: Scenography in a Book

This is a small side project I’ve been working on. The idea came to me one Saturday morning when I was contemplating my stationery (yes, I do this often), and since it refused to leave, I went and found a Moleskine to put it in.

The thought was to create a small piece of dramatic scenography contained within a book. The performance consists of opening the book when instigated by a four-line verse which tells the story of a man who takes a walk amongst it pages.

This is the verse followed by images from his journey:

He walked in, to the trees

over the undulating crease

of a landscape lit with time

fading on a sinking golden line

…

…

All images and text are copyright Ruchita Madhok, 2010. All rights reserved.

If you wish to reproduce these images for any purpose, including research, please request permission at contact[at]ruchitamadhok[dot]com

Thames River Project

This was our very first project on the MA PD&P at CSM. It was quick, collaborative and a great way to begin the year together

When: presented October 12, 2009

Where: CSM, Back Hill

Who: Aimi Gdula, Adele Han Li, Martin Schanbl, Rannva Karadottir, Ruchita Madhok

Brief: To research and study the river Thames. To then use the dramaturgy of the river in a time-based work or proposal

Our aims: To bring the river back into the consciousness of London; to provide a platform for people to rediscover their relationship with the river and to emphasize the Thames as the birthplace of London.

Our idea: To construct 4 cubic ice spaces from frozen Thames water that literally bring the river into the streets of the city.

These cubes would effectively block the traffic at Parliament Square and on the Oxford, Piccadilly and Holborn Circuses since each would be 15m x15m x 15m, with an opening on one side and open from above.

Cameras in sets of fours will be installed on four different boats which will be running for 24hrs a day. Live footage of from these cameras would be projected onto the walls of each of these cubes. The public would be able to physically enter these womb-like spaces that would muffle the sounds of the city and create a quiet, contemplative environment inside the ice. The installation would be open 24hours a day with projections running all day and all night varying with the boats’ routes along the river.

Locations for the ice cubes

one of the cubes at Oxford Circus

Scale and dimensions of the ice cubes

daytime view at Oxford Circus

night time view at Oxford Circus

projections would last all through the day and night

We hope that through this series of installations, the viewers are confronted with a direct experience of the Thames. We propose that the ice cubes remain on display until the ice has melted down and thus a cycle is created as the water brought out of the Thames flows back into it. As the ice melts, the city will emerge over the edges of the cube, the river flowing away.

In retrospect, I think our tutors were right in describing this as a radical idea. The idea of blocking traffic in central London and freezing 15m high blocks of Thames water sounds outlandish, but given that we had no real constraints to deal with, we decided to take the idea to the extreme. We spent a good deal of time deliberating, discussing and deciding to reach this concept. When we did, we were all unanimously convinced of it, and I think that’s why we enjoyed the process so much. We took a simple idea that everyone agreed on, worked it out a little and – since there was no budget to consider – we thought big and dreamt bigger. This is why I enjoy being a student: thinking out of the box and challenging oneself come with no strings attached!

Now I wish we could actually build this!

(All material contained herewith including images and concept are copyright of the authors of this project as mentioned above. All rights reserved)