Artist Mark Wallinger chooses winners of Schools’ Poster Competition to celebrate 150th anniversary of Tube

Turner prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger has chosen the three winners from Art on the Underground’s Labyrinth Schools Poster Competition from over 800 entries from 49 schools across 27 London boroughs.

The winning entries are from young people aged 5 to 18 years and were chosen for their highly original design and excellent interpretation of the competition brief.

Hundreds of thousands of customers will see the three lucky winners’ artwork when it starts to be displayed as a poster across all London Underground stations from today.

The posters were inspired by the words ’Future Journeys’ or ’Your Journey Starts Here’.

The competition drew upon Labyrinth, a major permanent project by artist Mark Wallinger, who has created a unique artwork for each of the 270 Tube stations for the 150th anniversary of London Underground.

The posters could be based on a vision of what a Tube station might look like in 2063 - when the Tube will be 200 years old.

The designs also needed to include a reference to the entrant’s local station and a labyrinth design.

The submission could be any style from abstract to cartoon, use any colours and any medium from collage to painting.
The winners


Flora Campbell, aged 12, from Lyndhurst Primary School in Southwark scooped the Primary school category with her poster of a girl with the names of Tube stations reflected across her face, D’arcy Livermore-Ephraim, aged 12, from St.Paul’s Way Trust School in Tower Hamlets won the secondary school category with his “Mile...End” labyrinth picture and Ibrahim Hashi, aged 17, from Brentside High School in Ealing stole the Sixth Form award with an abstract futurist tunnel creation.

There were also nine commended designs spanning these three age groups.

Earlier today Mark Wallinger and Mike Brown MVO Managing Director of London Underground and London Rail awarded all 12 students certificates and prizes in person at Southwark station.

Louise Coysh, Curator for Art on the Underground at London Underground, said: ’I’ve been bowled over by the standard of the entries and the way in which all the schools have engaged with the ideas behind Labyrinth. I’m sure these fantastic artworks will impress our customers as much as they impressed Mark Wallinger.’

D’arcy Livermore-Ephraim, aged 12, from St.Paul’s Way Trust Secondary School, Tower Hamlets, said: ’I entered the competition because we were learning about mazes so our Art Teacher, Miss Bader, told us about the Underground competition and then we started to make our Underground labyrinths.

’What gave me the idea of the poster was that I looked at a train map and saw the dots and that’s how I got the dots in the middle of my maze and the Underground has lots of trains and that’s why I put a train on the outside.

’I feel very happy that thousands of people are going to see my poster and I know lots of people go through the Underground everyday for work so I’m very happy that they are going to see my art work.’

Mark Wallinger, said: ’It’s been wonderful to see such an impressive array of personal responses by so many children and young people across the city who I hope will continue to engage with the artworks and the ideas behind them for years to come.’

The Labyrinth Schools Poster Competition is part of Art on the Underground’s engagement programme.

The Competition has been delivered in partnership with A New Direction, an organisation that connects children, young people and education with the best of arts and culture in London.

The project was supported using public funding from Arts Council England, with additional support from JCDecaux.
Nine commended entries


The nine commended entries below will be displayed on the Transport for London website at art.tfl.gov.uk/

Nirujan Thevarajah, Bond Primary School , Merton, Primary
Rojdar Cam, Bounds Green School, Haringey, Primary
Rosie Vaughan, Wimbledon Park Primary School, Merton
Caitlin Stanborough, Harris Academy Purley, Croydon, Secondary
Lisa Patel, Swaminarayan School, Brent, Secondary
Rayhan Karim, St. Paul’s Way Trust School, Tower Hamlets, Secondary
Pei Ei Leong, Brentside High School, Ealing, Sixth Form
Jessica Pereira, Plumstead Manor School, Greenwich, Sixth Form
Wura Bolarinwa, Brentside High School, Ealing, Sixth Form

Notes to editors:

• Mark Wallinger, born in Chigwell in 1959, is one of the UK’s leading contemporary artists. Among his works are Ecce Homo, the first commission for the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square, (1999), State Britain (2007) at Tate Britain, the proposed Ebbsfleet Landmark Commission White Horse (2009), Via Dolorosa in the crypt of the Duomo in Milan and Sinema Amnesia (2012) for Turner Contemporary in Margate (2012). Among his solo shows are the Serpentine Gallery, London, Tate Liverpool, Vienna Secession, Museum for Gegenwartskunst, Basel, Palais Des Beaux Arts, Brussels, Museum de Pont, Tilburg and his latest solo exhibition, SITE, took place in 2012 at Baltic, Gateshead. He was one of three artists commissioned for Metamorphosis: Titian 2012 at the National Gallery, London as part of the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad. His work is in the collections of leading international museums including Tate, MoMA New York, and Centre Pompidou Paris. Wallinger represented Great Britain at the 2001 Venice Biennale. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 2007
• Alongside the Labyrinth commission, Art on the Underground continues its programme of collaborations between artists and young people, working with schools and 33 boroughs to enable teachers, students and their communities to inspire their own creative responses which will be shared on the Labyrinth online microsite. A special project with young people in partnership with Youth Support Development Service in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea will lead to new artworks and exhibitions at selected Tube stations
• London Underground established Art on the Underground in 2000 initially under the title Platform for Art, with the purpose of producing and presenting new artworks that enrich the journeys of millions on the tube every day. From single site large-scale commissions at sites such as Gloucester Road Station, to pocket size commissions for the cover of the Tube Map, Art on the Underground has commissioned a roll-call of the best artists in the last 13 years, maintaining art as a central element of London Underground’s identity and engaging passengers and staff in a strong sense of shared ownership. Artists include Cindy Sherman, Tracey Emin, Michael Landy, Jeremy Deller, Susan Hiller, Barbara Kruger, Liam Gillick, Eva Rothschild, Yinka Shonibare, Richard Long, Gary Hume, Richard Wentworth, Gavin Turk and Peter Blake
• Labyrinth is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, and sponsored by J C Decaux
• Mark Wallinger’s Labyrinth is one of a series of special 150 Anniversary commissions including ’15 for 150’, 15 contemporary artists mark 150 years of the Tube with posters and limited edition prints
• To find out more about Mark Wallinger’s Labyrinth go to art.tfl.gov.uk/labyrinth

London Underground

• The Tube is undergoing a huge and essential programme to modernise its ageing infrastructure - vital to cope with a growing population and to support the economic development and growth of the capital and the UK. This includes the introduction of new track and signalling and the rebuilding of some of our most important stations. By the end of the current programme there will be 30% more capacity
• Images available on request