tubewhore: Life in thread

Tubewhore (

tubewhore) wrote,
@ 2007-01-02 21:44:00

Life in thread
Behind the pointlessness of this project, the 'doing-it-because-I-can'-ness of the thing, there is also the drive to produce art from it. Art based on ideas of our own psychogeography, of the stories embedded in the journeys of our lives. Oh, that sounds so grand and high falutin'...

...Anyway, I want to produce a series of embroideries to represent the tube journeys people take regularily or that have meant something, going out, meeting people, job interviews, visiting friends, going shopping...all the minutia of life in London...

These embroideries will be done to the same scale on semi-transparent fabric so that they can be displayed together in layers, eith major interchange stations matching up across the layers, so that people and journeys are overlaid across each other.

We all share this space and yet often go out of our way to avoid contact with our fellow travellers, all in our individual layers. So representing this post would involve an embroidery beginning with London Bridge to Bank to Queensway...with small details of story embroidered in a cartouche like old maps and images of London Bridge and Westbourne Grove perhaps painted in, or silk screened underneath...

With this in mind, and to my astonishment discovering that there are a considerable number of people reading this journal who I don't know who are following my progress, I'd ask you to tell me your tube stories, of favourite journeys, or journeys you have to make, or ones that have stuck in your head. Please leave a comment if you'd like a journey added to the project; all commets to be screened unless you state othewise.

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veridianeyes
2007-01-02 10:47 pm UTC (link)

The first time I ever rode the tube alone was travelling from Liverpool Street to Royal Oak (Hammersmith and City line if i remember correctly, the pink one(?)- not the longest of journeys but actually incredibly hard for me. I dislike travelling alone at the best of times and I'd never been to the Royal Oak area before. Just finding my way via tickets and making sure I got the right train was hard but I did it and after that travelling in the tube, while still enough to make me aprihesive wasn't 'a great unknown' anymore.
New things are always incredibly scary for me - Although I make a concerted effort to try things these days.

I have some more I can tell you about if you'd like. You can unscreen this if you want!

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tubewhore
2007-01-03 11:34 am UTC (link)

oh yes - do tell more!

I have vivid memories of travelling on the tube for the first time on school trips to London as a young teen. We were given a few hours to explore by ourselves - what were they thinking!!! - and I wandered around Covent Garden and China Town and then not knowing how close together these things were took the tube back to Leicester Square. I tripped on the stairs coming out and dropped some china rice bowls I'd bought for Mum at Neat Street East. It made that awful noise china makes when it hits something and an elderly chap behind me exclaimed 'oh no!' but amazingly on unwrapping it on the steps it hadn't broken at all due to good wrapping by the shop assistant. We both went 'hurrah!' I didn't know at the time how rare those moments of concern and connection would be in London

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veridianeyes
2007-01-03 11:52 am UTC (link)

Happy memory - Getting the tube from the science museum to near liverpool street (can't remember if we changed trains or not) with some fellow art students and me and the only other person on the course who was over 18 slipping off to the pub for a drink and some food and we ended up spending the rest of the afternoon nattering before having to rush to meet up with the rest of the group at Liverpool street so as to not miss the train home.
Sorry can't be more specific about the route taken.

I remember the tube vividly as a small child. We would travel down to exmouth almost every summer of my early childhood to stay with my aunt, and this meant taking the tube between Liverpool Street and Paddington. The tube is intimidating as an adult but was horrid as child. I was in eternal fear of getting seperated from my mum and sister.At that age it was a sea of legs and strangers.
I used to distract myself by obsessively following the tube map.

I remember going shopping age 13 or 14 to Libertys with my mother looking at possible fabric for my grandmothers wedding dress (It was made out of antique saris my step-grandfather had bought back from his 'colonial' days as an officer in the british army.)It would have been from Liverpool Street again but I cannot for the life of me remember the route we went.

The tube featured heavily in my GCSE art project. The year I took it the challenge was *food and drink* and although I had spent the school holidays preparing I was absolutly stumped for an idea - we had been at my aunts again that summer - and travelling back we had just got off the tube - (paddington to liverpool street) when I looked at the tube map and realised that the circle line makes the shape of a bottle and the Canary Wharf area forms a glass - And so my GCSE art project was born! I ended up making a tube map with ribbon routes, bottle top tube stations, the bottle padded out and with cellophane liquid pouring out of the bottle into the 'glass' of the river.

Hope they are some use. And again - You are welcome to unscreen.

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tubewhore
2007-01-03 01:42 pm UTC (link)

Oh, I love Liberty. It's changed a bit recently, not all of which I approve of - such as it doesn't sell patterns anymore, and the fabric department has contracted - but the building itself is just the most beautiful shop in the world.

Looks like Liverpool Street will be your station! Haven't had cause to go through there for years.

As for a sea of legs - sitting on the station at Holborn recently and took pics of the massed humanity hemming me in. Shame the pictures didn't come out - maybe I should have been sketching instead.

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	veridianeyes 2007-01-03 01:45 pm UTC (link)
	I really need to get down to London again! Unfortunatly Liverpool Street is the only station you could come into when you get the direct train from my old hometown Ipswich! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tubewhore 2007-01-08 12:53 pm UTC (link)
	when you do plan a trip to London, let me know and we can try to met up from opposite ends of the country! (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	veridianeyes 2007-01-08 12:55 pm UTC (link)
	I shall try! though flatmate is moving in with his lady so cash may be tight for a while. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tubewhore 2007-01-08 12:57 pm UTC (link)
	off topic - walking up to the Post Office with your Patchwork book later this afternoon. Was there anything else I was supposed to be sending you? I have nagging thhoughts that I've forgotten tons of things? (Reply to this)(Parent)

midnightxpress
2007-01-03 01:45 am UTC (link)

Well the first one that springs to mind is the aforementioned Brixton to Harrow, if only because it drove me half insane, which probably isnt the nicest memory, but then insanity goes quite well with art...I guess KX (or St Pancrease) to Tottenham Court Road or Camden Town on the northern line has alot of appeal, since I used to use it to get to the astoria or garage etc to watch whatever metal or hardcore bands were playing there, at a time when those bands didnt tour as much here in the UK, since metal and hardcore were in a slump, in terms of media coverage and having to travel from Cambridge, Brighton or sometimes even Stoke...plenty of fun and slightly dodgy memories...do remember having to spend a summer's night on the bench at KX wearing only a Morbid Saint tee shrt and jeans, and probably looking like an heroin addict...Also the northern end of the Metropolitan line to Chorleywood (fancy doign that as TW run in '07?)remind me of visiting my grandmother imn recent years (when I was in London natch) before she got dreadfully sick...

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tubewhore
2007-01-03 11:42 am UTC (link)

going up to Chorleywood sounds good...

I certainly remember trips to London when doing my A Levels and going to Denmark Street to buy comics at FP when it was still a tiny little shop down an alleyway. It was also so vastly exciting, and having copies of 'Strange Days' and other Eclipse titles got us loads of cachet back in Cornwall. That and buying paisley shirts like Robert Smith wore in Portobello Market.

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