Renowned British painter and local resident Hurvin Anderson, whose major Tate Britain exhibition opens in March – has been commissioned to create 10th annual mural at Brixton Tube.
The new artwork will launch in November, succeeding the current mural by Rudy Loewe.
The Tube commissions respond to the history of murals in Brixton from the 1980s, and to the wider social and political history of mural-making.
The new work for Brixton Tube will extend Anderson’s decades-long investigation into scenes of transit and migration.
He was brought up in Birmingham by Jamaican parents, and spent time in Trinidad.His paintings (above) frequently reflect on diasporic life in the UK, and the postcolonial Caribbean landscape.
Anderson’s commission for Brixton draws on his connection to the area, where has lived for extended periods, with a studio in Tulse Hill since 1998.
His artwork is one of five public commissions announced today (8 January) by Transport for London (TfL) as part of its Art on the Underground programme for 2026.
“The new commissions will give space to under-represented voices,” TfL said.
Eleanor Pinfield, head of Art on the Underground, said the organisation continues to bring remarkable artists to London, ”reframing public space and our interactions within it”.
This year’s programme explores ”omissions from public space; works engaging with lost waterways of London, the lost venues that have supported voices in the city , and the hidden labour of night-time workers”.
These works, the Brixton mural, and TfL’s wider programme “continue to shape, direct and honour how we collectively experience and remember place – whether that be our local community or spaces we travel through at different times of our lives.”
Artists Ain Bailey, Caroline Walker, Ellen Gallagher and Phoebe Boswell will create works on London’s transport network.
A large photographic artwork by London-based artist Boswell will launch at Bethnal Green and Notting Hill stations in March. Following a public call out to Black swimming communities around Bethnal Green and Notting Hill, the new work will continue Boswell’s exploration of water “as a site of healing, migratory trauma and collective power”.
Installed on panels next to the escalators, the artwork will have four multi-layered photographic assemblages of Black swimmers who have made London their home, or whose families have historically migrated here across generations.
For the 42nd edition of the pocket Tube map, launching in June, American artist Ellen Gallagher will invite viewers on a journey. Her map cover will explore notions of sediment and the subterranean waterways which run alongside the Underground tunnels.
A new audio work by London-based composer, artist and DJ Ain Bailey for Waterloo Underground station undertakes “an autobiographical mapping of London” and features an original composition and recording by London-born British-Caribbean experimental vocalist and movement artist Elaine Mitchener. It will pay homage to more than 60 London venues that have now closed.
A large-scale commission by Scottish painter Caroline Walker that will launch at Stratford station in September will explore the often-invisible labour of women working on TfL’s networks at night.
Following visits to Stratford Market Depot, where all Jubilee line trains return each evening to be cleaned and maintained, Walker shadowed women working night shifts as train operators and cleaners.
The 2026 programme is sponsored by recruitment company, Reed, as part of its ongoing commitment to Art on the Underground.
