Four artists from the north east of England have won the commission to supply artwork to be applied to the interior of the new Tyne and Wear Metro trains after an open call for submissions. Each artist will go on to create a major new work to cover the full height and width of carriage end walls right throughout the fleet of 46 trains now being built by Stadler.
The four successful artists are:
- Sofia Fox Barton – a multi disciplinary artist from Newcastle. Her work will explore hidden histories across North East England and celebrate diverse figures from diverse and cultural backgrounds.
- Sara Gibbeson – freelance illustrator based in North East England. Her aim is to capture a slice of life from around the region, bringing her sketches together to create an illustrated snapshot of the people and places she observes as she travels by Metro and visits the communities around it.
- Hazel Oakes – working as Nocciola the Drawer is an illustrator and mural artist from County Durham. Her artwork will be inspired by the communities of women who wild sea swim along the North East coast. It will be a celebration of them enjoying the beautiful coastline that Metro serves.
- Bryony Simcox – urbanist, optimist and maker who studied architecture at Newcastle University. She will create a large-scale paper collage which distils the feelings and vibe of the places along the Metro. Combining photography gathered from the community with archive imagery and magazine and book cuttings, bold and colourful at the macro scale and rich with detail at the micro scale.
Huw Lewis, Customer Services Director at Nexus, said: “We are thrilled to be working with Sofia, Sara, Hazel and Bryony, four very different artists but each of them an amazing talent with a unique vision for Metro’s new trains. The Tyne and Wear Metro will, we believe, be the first urban transit system anywhere in the world to commission major new art works inside trains, the height and width of a train carriage, which will be seen by millions of people every year. Nexus has a proud history of commissioning public art over the 40 years of Metro, but it is a huge step forward for us to ask artists to work inside our £362m train fleet. Metro is part of everyday life in North East England, and we look forward to seeing four exciting new works which reflect on our modern, diverse region and its heritage in strikingly different ways. We have involved our customers very heavily to shape the design of our new trains. People were keen to see art and incorporated into the train design, and we are grateful to Arts Council England for the National Lottery grant funding which has made this possible.”
More than 120 submissions were received from around the world with the final four chosen by a panel bringing Nexus employees from train operations and the fleet project with community arts professionals from the region.
The artists will go on to complete their final works through immersion and engagement in the communities and places which Metro serves. Two works of art will appear in each train with each work appearing 23 times across the complete fleet of 46 trains being constructed in Switzerland.
- More from the successful artists can be seen in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YawA81UNUbk