There’s a spot in London underneath Waterloo station, across the river from Big Ben, that’s become a designated graffiti area, where artists from all over the world show their work. The Leake Street tunnel has become an enormous ever changing canvas for all kinds and styles of expression.
It was originally used by Banksy in 2008 for the Cans Festival, and has been open for writers ever since. Every inch of the 300 foot tunnel is painted, and whilst some of the more hard to reach places, like the ceilings, keep their art longer than others, you could visit every few days and see amazing brand new pieces.
Whilst in London in the summer with the family and Heidi’s dad and sister visiting from Canada, I persuaded everyone to take a stroll through the arches. After posting some pics of our visit an artist who regularly paints in the tunnel found our little site and invited me to do a couple of collaboration pieces with him.
Marc Craig, a multidisciplinary artist from London, painted the huge blue whale on the ceiling above the Blek le Rat tank, and put together the Mind the Map project and exhibition.
Marc discovered a large cache of OS maps in his dad’s stuff and decided they’d make great canvasses. So the idea was to do some art on one map, then hand that to another artist to complete, whilst another map was done the opposite way round. In total there are over a hundred artists involved in the project, all with amazing results. It was a huge honour to be part of this project, Marc is a really nice guy and I hope to collab with him again in the future.
The maps were exhibited at the Sidings in Waterloo station from 18th to the 26th October, and prints will be available in later in the year.
While we were visiting the exhibition we took a moment to tag the tunnel.
