Bus-Tops

The project, which is part of the 2012 Cultural Olympiad, is now coming to fruition, with the first artworks being revealed on 1 January 2012. The 20 screens will display a rolling series of artworks, which anyone can submit, and users can choose the stop, time and date their work is shown.

Submissions of artworks are still being accepted for the 1 January launch date, and so far works have come in from local communities, members of the public and nine contemporary artists, meaning that London itself become a sort of gallery space, with art displayed on 30 screens within 20 boroughs  across the city.

The first artist to hold a ‘residency’ on the screens is Turner Prize nominee Mark Titchner. He says, ‘Throughout our daily lives, we constantly absorb images and texts that generate desire or ambition; that tell us that we can be more than we are.

‘The project is an attempt to present this phenomenon in its most blunt form as a series of inspirational, though potentially unobtainable, commands: a disembodied voice that is both nurturing and humbling.’

Among the other artists that will hold the residencies are Conrad Ventur, Jemima Brown, Kate David and Jasmina Cibic.

Alfie Dennen and Paula Le Dieu, founders of the Bus-Tops project and artistic directors of Art Public, say, ‘Bus-Tops aims to challenge conventions in public art that speaks for and of them. We hope that by putting the discourse back into public hands we can delight, provoke and inspire bus travellers as they gaze out their top deck windows.’

Bus-Tops will be on display from 1 January – 9 September 2012. See the website for more information http://bus-tops.com

 Here’s a video of the team making the screen enclosures: