Fragments of the Tube network will come to life in Guildhall Art Gallery — at least that's what it'll feel like.
The exhibition Jock McFadyen and Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface) sets up shop in the City of London gallery from the end of February, with McFadyen's substantial paintings of sections of the Tube (some measuring around two metres long) soundtracked by creaks, groans and grinding — as recorded by Pogues musician Jem Finer.
McFadyen's paintings — which first appeared in his 1990s exhibition Underground — create familiar, yet uneasy, tableaux for Londoners: people-less offcuts featuring oblique views of Central line ceilings; an empty Aldgate East platform bathed in sickly yellow strip lights.
Explains Jock McFadyen: "Many of us descend daily into the tunnels and carriages that offer rapid access to distant parts of our urban world. We see and hear a remarkable variety of things there, but how often do we pay attention to the graffiti-daubed exteriors, the rails, pipes, struts, and wires that adorn the surface of the spaces through which we pass?
"How often do we really listen to all the mysterious mechanical and organic sounds that emanate from the subterranean caverns that house our public transport?"
These sounds are the result of Finer's field recordings of the Northern and Central lines, which aim to heighten McFadyen's paintings into 'living, breathing organisms'; the blasts of mechanical-yet-melodic sounds may well be the same as those you hear en route to the exhibition. On the way home, you'll surely be paying more attention.
Adding another (quite literal) level to McFadyen's original Tube works is the addition of new surface landscapes linked to each of his subterranean paintings. Walthamstow Greyhound Stadium stretches out like a deco mirage, beneath a fresh blue sky — quite the respite from the murky underworld. But even at ground level there is unease and claustrophobia; take the brooding clouds which cast a ceiling of grey over Three Colts Lane. This is not so much Fairytale of New York, as Fever Dream of London.
If you're looking for an exhibition to brighten the nascent months of the year, this won't be it — yet if the combination of the London Underground and boundary-nudging art is something that titillates you (and you are a Londonist reader after all), then you'll be jumping on the Underground to see (and hear) what it's all about.
Jock McFadyen and Jem Finer: Underground (and Surface), Guildhall Art Gallery, 27 February-20 September 2026, pay what you can.
