Photos from Mind the Map Exhibition at London Transport Museum

London Transport Museum opens its new exhibition - Mind the Map to the public today - 18th May 2012 which is running until 28th October. I was lucky enough to be invited to the launch party last night and took a number of pictures while I was there.


The Museum describe the exhibition as follows "Mind the Map: inspiring art, design and cartography will draw on the Museum’s outstanding map collection to explore the themes of journeys, identity and publicity. The exhibition will be the largest of its kind and will include previously unseen historic material and exciting new artworks by leading artists including Simon Patterson, Stephen Walter, Susan Stockwell, Jeremy Wood, Claire Brewster, and Agnes Poitevin-Navarre."

I really enjoyed it (admittedly not as much as Sense in The City - which I think was the best exhibition London Transport Museum had ever put on) and there are some very interesting posters, scupltures, artwork and even interactive displays.

The picture above is a cartoon from 2009 where you may remember the River Thames was left off the Tube map for the first time causing some uproar and Boris Johnson, demanding it be put back

Simon Patterson revisited his famous "The Great Bear" first designed 20 years ago with a new piece called Saptarishi - another constellation within The Great Bear


I've grown quite fond of The Great Bear now and it's led to a number of Tube Map "mash ups" where station names have been replaced by a whole host of things - anagrams, film titles, song titles, fonts, Dr Who characters - you name it. However I found Saptarishi quite puzzling. As did many others viewing it. But I suppose that's the point of it. You'll be saying "Why has he dedicated a line to The Murdochs?", "What's their connection to the spies line?" "Why aren't Jedward on the Musicians Line?"



The more historical maps and map covers are equally fascinating



I loved the Jubilee Line edition of the District Railway map for 1887 and the maps promoting travel to the British Empire Exhbition by Underground

These are amazing posters that you could get lost in for hours

 
Look out for a new poster display on the other side of the main exhibition space at London Transport Museum. You'll see a playful poster from when Night Buses were extended to outer London to "Boldly go where no Night Bus has gone before"



TfL were keen to promote that the buses extended to outer limits - even "to the furthest reaches of the Known Universe: Dagenham"



A map made out of transport tickets - Momemento by Susan Stockwell was one of my favourites of the modern pieces.

  

I was also fascinated to see the video of Tracey Emin explaining her thought processes behind The Central Line - her new artwork for the June 2012 Tube Map cover (see my earlier blog post on this)



This sculpture also gave an alternative look at the Tube Map that was quite hypnotic



You can see the rest of my photographs from Mind The Map in this Flickr set. I will definitely make another trip to the exhibition if only to look the wonderful MacDonald Gill pieces from the 1940's and ponder more on the connections between people on Simon Patterson's map.

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