Art on the Underground Announces New Permanent Installation by Otobong Nkanga

Nkanga’s site-specific work for Nine Elms will be her first permanent public artwork in the UK. The launch of this work is the second permanent art commission for the two stations of the Northern line extension, following the unveiling of Alexandre da Cunha’s Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset at Battersea Power Station Underground station in 2021.
 
Nkanga works in drawings, installations, photographs, sculptures, tapestry and performances. Her work often explores material histories of the earth and the processes of extraction and transportation. She brings to light the memories and historical impacts provoked by humans and nature, seeing the body and the landscape as one. For Nine Elms, Nkanga will form a new topology for the station that intertwines ecological and geological narratives with a human history of interventions in the riverside landscape. Working with large scale vitreous enamel panels, a material that is used across London Underground, Nkanga will create an alternative view of the subterranean for the platforms of Nine Elms Underground station.

For this commission, Nkanga has considered the long history of the area. The station sits close to the River Thames, formed as an independent channel 10,000 years ago toward the end of the last Ice Age. The developments of this stretch of river and the land around it have been driven by the ebb and flow of water. For centuries, the area was marsh-like, cultivated by market gardens, controlled by river walls and sluices, before local rivers were encased underground (as sewers), with ever increasing development of the land above.
 
The artist has taken as her starting point this early history of Nine Elms, its historic naming from elm trees and its location as a low marsh on the riverside. Depicting the foundations of geology through soil and the flow of water, this new work will take the form of a series of rectangular enamel panels, interspersed with amorphous, fluid extrusions. Across the enamel panels water flows, punctured by tree roots, to indicate this marsh-history of the riverside area. A body of water spreads across the image, from which land and soil are dredged up, disseminating ochres, greens, and botanical imagery through the image. On large, raised island sections, Nkanga recounts the way in which humankind forces changes on land. As the station has been dug out of the earth, the area’s connections to communities and ecologies have been necessarily reimagined. The island panels depict these reforged connections and overlay the work with a lattice of new meaning, as though the earth itself is recounting its story.

In her extensive painting practice, Nkanga often depicts patchworks of land: brown-black soil, green and yellow fields, or concrete grey terrains that are connected to human forms and interlink in a constellation. In her development of large-scale tapestry works over the past decade, her depictions of terrain encompass rich overlaid colours and shimmering threads that make visible human ties to huge expanses of ocean and land.

In contrast to the industrial tones of the station architecture, Nkanga’s work for Nine Elms uses colours of natural phenomena: of water, the soil, plants and the earth. The artwork takes the form of storytelling, of twin narratives of our deep geological environment and human attempts to tame, cultivate and control nature around us.
 
Situated above a public bench on the wide island platform between the station’s north and southbound platforms, and at just under 20 square metres, the work is within touching distance, set within the station’s imposing grid of concrete beams and columns. 

Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries, said: “Art on the Underground continues to transform the way people experience London by bringing world-class art into our everyday journeys. Otobong Nkanga’s new artwork is a fantastic addition to the Tube network, bringing Nine Elms’s geological and ecological history to life. It will encourage Londoners and visitors to see the area in a completely different light, helping us build a better London for everyone.”

Eleanor Pinfield, Head of Art on the Underground, said: “Otobong Nkanga’s new work for Nine Elms station is a major addition to London’s contemporary art landscape from one of Europe’s most renowned artists. Nkanga’s permanent artwork intertwines references to the deep history of the area, the river and waterways and the marshy soil, and the changes brought by construction. In a Tube station recently dug out from the earth, Nkanga’s new commission provides an extraordinary new perspective on how we shape and are shaped by the land around us, to be enjoyed by millions for decades to come.”

Nkanga’s artwork will join permanent works commissioned by Art on the Underground across the transport network, including Alexandre da Cunha’s Sunset, Sunrise, Sunset at Battersea Power Station (2021); Daniel Buren’s Diamonds and Circles, works in situ, at Tottenham Court Road station (2017); Rosie Hastings & Hannah Quinlan’s Angels of History at St James’s Park station (2024); Larry Achiampong’s PAN AFRICAN FLAG FOR THE RELIC TRAVELLERS’ ALLIANCE (UNION) at Westminster station (2022); and Lucy McKenzie’s Pleasure’s Inaccuracies at Sudbury Town station (2020). 

Main Image: Otobong Nkanga, portrait, 2023. Photo: Wim van Dongen