Underground Art: Old Street’s Hidden Installations

by Emma Milner

We all know East London is covered with street art from rooftops to pavements but what about underground? The literal underground. As you rush out of the tube at Old Street station to get onto the streets do you notice the art installation you’re passing by?

There are two works by Kevin Walker and Karin von Ompteda hiding at Old Street. On the wall opposite the gates, to the right of the pay phones is a light installation by Walker. Blue LED tiles, shaped like the surrounding wall tiles, flash from left to right seemingly randomly but there is a pattern if you can riddle it out. Specific inspiration came from HAL in Stanley Kubrick’s Space Odyssey – Walker points out that the whole station looks a bit like a space ship crashed into Shoreditch some time in the 60s.

Along the corridors are von Ompteda’s posters displaying Carl Bigmore’s photographs of various parts of the station, decrepit tiles and mouldy walls. In their frames they look much the same as an album advert and the text “Welcome to Tech City” makes it look a bit like some sort of hipster tourist board sign; playing on the gentrification of the surrounding area.