Brixton station welcomed a new mural by a local London artist which celebrates the community’s people and history.
Rudy Loewe, the artist who created the mural which is called The Congregation, wanted to ‘honour Brixton’s history as a place of resistance and community gathering.’
Inspired by comics, this work is part of TFL’s Art on the Underground campaign, and is the 9th mural in a series called The Brixton Mural Program which was first launched in 2018.
Loewe said: “I think if I was trying to sum up this mural in a few words, it would be the importance of gathering. The importance of being able to come together.
“I think there is a particular way that people have gathered here [in Brixton] and that is also present in the way that people have been able to, to a certain degree, resist some of the things that are happening here that maybe are not great for the community.
“It’s a way for people to hold each other, and support each other; so I would say that element is particular to Brixton.”
This work is one of a collection of murals which resonate with the history of South West London, and particularly with Brixton‘s association with London’s African-Caribbean community.
When asked what was the inspiration behind this series, Eleanor Pinfield, head of the Art on the Underground campaign, said: “We thought how might contemporary artists, people who are working and painting capture that in a space, as a collective memory for Brixton?
“The idea was a response to the wider history of mural making in the area.”
Pinfield said: “It is an incredible collective portrait of the area through time and space, different moments captured altogether in an amazing, multi-coloured, multi-layered work at the entrance to Brixton station.
“As people know Brixton is a very hectic, sensorial, loud place and I think Rudy really brought that energy to the work that you are seeing today.”
The work speaks to the history of London’s black community over the last 75 years, featuring Marcia Rigg, Sistermatic (a black lesbian sound group), and TFL worker CJ Rivers who is ‘representative of Caribbean workers.’
Sasha Morse, curator at Art on the Underground, said: “[Loewe] Wanted to offer an alternative entry point to the history of Brixton.
“Addressing some of the gaps after doing a lot of archival research in the local area, and wanting to think about the stories that are not told in those dominant histories which are not archived in public records, and interweave them into a personal sense of Brixton which is a vibrant, joyful place of resistance and community gathering.”
Featured image credit: Lucy Carrier-Pilkington
