Bringing Joy to the commute

Joy Batchelor’s creations are to be shown as part of a season of films showing at Canary Wharf Underground Station entitled Birds Eye View: Past, Present and Future, which has been co-produced by Art on the Underground and Birds Eye View Film Festival to showcase the work of female filmmakers.

Batchelor’s oeuvre includes her 1954 animation of George Orwell’s Animal Farm, though the four films being screened draw on her brilliant public service animations, which will be projected on a large screen in the concourse of Canary Wharf Underground station.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WL3dF4tVKG4

The works on show are The Five (1970), Modern Guide to Health (1946), Your Very Good Health (1948) and Farmer Charley (1949).

The animations are charming, and rather surreal – particularly The Five, in which some angry toes narrate a day of being stuffed into ill-fitting shoes, and have a terrible time at a rather groovy-sounding party:

Art on the Underground says,  ‘Batchelor’s stylistic range, quick wit and humour come to light in this series of 1940s and 1970s public-service animations about health and city life – words of wisdom that are still relevant today, finding new meaning in the public space of the London Underground’.

Following the Joy Bathcelor Season will be works from Yasmin Fedda, Oonagh Kearney, Tali Yankelevich and Eva Weber from 19 June.

Joy Batchelor’s films will be on show from 21 May – 18 June at Canary Wharf Underground station, London, E14