the times | Thursday May 26 2022 9
arts
Tunnel visions — is
Crossrail’s art any good?
for some time. “They’re already
starting to reek,” somebody says,
adding: “Let’s take their generator.”
Bilobrova met Kvedaravicius
when he cast her in his feature film
Parthenon, and they were inseparable.
She calls him her husband, although
they were engaged and not yet
married. Mariupolis 2 is a sequel to
Mariupolis, his 2016 documentary
about the city, which at that time had
been attacked by pro-Russian
separatists. When Russia invaded this
year Kvedaravicius and Bilobrova
were in Uganda working on a feature
film, but they dropped everything,
flew to Ukraine and started filming.
The last time they saw each other
was at the end of March;
Kvedaravicius was going to another
Top: Hanna Bilobrova
and, above right,
Mantas Kvedaravicius.
Above: a scene from
their film Mariupolis 2I don’t
want to
fo rge t
him. I
don’t want
people to
forget him
part of Mariupol to help
victims of the
bombardment to escape.
“He told me that I should
not go with him,” Bilobrova
says. “The next day he
didn’t come back.” After
she had been searching for
days, an officer on the
Russian side told her that
Kvedaravicius was dead.
“I said, ‘OK, until I see a
body I won’t believe you.’ ”
Tragically she soon had her
proof. The corpse was lying
face down in the street.
Kvedaravicius had been
shot in the stomach, but
Bilobrova has said that there
was no blood on the ground
and no bullet holes in the
clothes he was wearing.
“It’s been written that he
was killed while shooting
the film, but that’s not true,”
she says. “He didn’t have a
camera. He came to rescue
people and was captured and
killed in cold blood.” Why?
Kvedaravicius was not a
journalist — he had a PhD
in social anthropology from
the University of Cambridge
and saw his films as fieldwork.
“If they had wanted to
exchange him or something
they would have brought him
to the headquarters,”
Bilobrova says. “So what was the point
of killing him? I don’t know why. I’m
trying to figure that out.”
Some small consolation is that they
knew they were doing meaningful
work. “From the beginning the film
felt important,” Bilobrova says. “People
were like, ‘Oh, someone from the
outside world. Did you know that we
are here in Mariupol?’ They thought
they’d been forgotten. And we are like,
‘No, the whole world is talking about
Mariupol.’ And they started to cry.
‘No, you are lying to us.’ They have no
network, no GPS connection, they
literally don’t know what’s going on in
the neighbouring street.”
Mariupolis 2, which doesn’t yet have
a UK release date, aims “to show the
regular life of people under the war”,
Bilobrova says. “You can’t change
anything, so you live your life. You eat,
you laugh.” Sheltering in the basement
of a church, the people in the film are
stoic and wryly funny. One keeps
pigeons, admiring them as they
cluster in a group of 20 on a rooftop.
“It’s not that bad,” somebody says.
“Not that bad?” the pigeon fancier
answers. “I used to have 300.”
The strength of Kvedaravicius as a
director, Turincev says, was that he
shot what was in front of him without
trying to shape it into a story. “It’s
often considered that if you’re filming
war you need to film things that are
spectacular. It’s very rare to meet
someone who has such freedom, no
preconceived ideas.” The film is special
because it doesn’t try to be special. “He
was always working on three different
projects,” Turincev says. “His brain
was always working. He was funny
and free and I’m going to miss him.”
“He was inspired by this love of
people,” Bilobrova says, tears flowing.
“He had this belief in each human
being, that they can do whatever they
want.” She must be hugely proud of
him. “I’m so proud. I don’t want to
forget him. And I don’t want people to
forget him. For the film to be here and
being watched by people and talked
about is the best present for him.”p v b “ n s d s d R K “ b T pfa
K s B w a c w t s c p k Kjo
in
t a “ e t tBilobrovaLaura Freeman takes a tour of the Elizabeth
Line’s artworks — and longs for some colour
KI PRICE; RICCARDO GHILARDI/CONTOUR/GETTY IMAGESthe next train is held in a tunnel?
I get a birdwatcher’s thrill every
time I go through Stockwell station
and spot Abram Games’s abstract
swan. Look for the orange beak, then
tilt your head sideways. Games used
to joke: “You have to step well back
to see it properly. But I wouldn’t
recommend it.”
The capital’s collection of
transport art is a mix of the good
(Eduardo Paolozzi’s platform
mosaics at Tottenham Court Road,
Jacqueline Poncelet’s enamel
Wrapper at the otherwise unlovely
Edgware Road), the bad (the
soppy bronze lovers at St Pancras,
the paunchy John Betjeman at
St Pancras, Fabian Peake’s
fridge-magnet war memorial at, er,
St Pancras) and the crassly obvious
(giant, tiled gift-wrapped presents at
big-spending Bond Street).
Now that we are banned from
staring at each other, the need is
all the greater for art worth staring
at. In 2013, to mark the 150th
anniversary of the London
Underground, the artist Mark
Wallinger installed 270 vitreous
enamel “Labyrinths” in 270 Tube
stations. They are like the pilgrim’s
mazes on the floors of medieval
cathedrals. Next time you’re stuck
on a platform, seek one out. Yet
perhaps the greatest maze of all is
Harry Beck’s Underground map,
now with a new thin purple line.
As for me, I now have a choice
when travelling from my flat to
Tottenham Court Road. I can go
via the
Elizabeth
Line and
Richard
Wright’s
gilded
stars, or
the Central
Line and
Paolozzi’s
colourful,
madcap
mosaics.
It’s slower,
but the
brights
might
just
have it.T
he last time I was down in
the Crossrail tunnels it was- In hard hat, borrowed
boots and high-vis jacket, I
clambered down 33 vertical
metres of ladders and scaffolding to
what would in 2018 (2019, 2020,
2021.. .) be the Farringdon platform.
It was a massive, cavernous, filthy
place heaving with blackened JCB
tractors. A bird sanctuary had been
built at Wallasea in Essex from all
the excavated muck.
Yesterday I sailed serenely down
the escalators to the now renamed
Elizabeth Line at Paddington station,
opened by the Queen last week.
Above was Spencer Finch’s A Cloud
Index, a glass canopy printed with
pastel impressions of clouds. I’ve
seen it on a blue day looking like a
Turner watercolour. On a grey day
— and yesterday was very grey —
it just looks grubby.
At Tottenham Court Road,
Richard Wright’s untitled
gold-on-concrete ceiling weathers
the weather rather better.
Remember those glow-in-the-dark
stars you used to stick above the
bed? Well, imagine a gorgeous, art
deco-style version of that. Had I gone
a stop further to Farringdon, I’d
have seen Simon Periton’s Avalanche,
a sequence of tumbling diamonds
paying homage to the nearby
jewellers’ district Hatton Garden.
At Whitechapel, Chantal Joffe’s
collaged figures stroll and shop along
the platform, while at Newham,
Sonia Boyce has created
a mile-long frieze
of photographs
of east London.
Next year, Yayoi
“polka dot” Kusama
will unveil a spotty
sculpture above
ground at Liverpool
Street station. Joffe
apart, it’s all very
silver and subtle.
Where’s the colour?
If art is for all, it
should be accessible.
Galleries that
open 10am-5pm
aren’t much
good to the
working
man or woman.
Why shouldn’t
the commute
be a
communion
with art? Since
our stations
and trains
have a captive
audience,
why not divert
them, uplift
them,
give them
something
with which to
while away
the unforgiving
minutes when
v E L R W g s t L P c m m I b b mju
Spencer Finch’s A Cloud h
Index, at PaddingtonYayoi Kusama’s sculpture
at Liverpool StreetCOMMISSIONED AS PART OF THE CROSSRAIL ART PROGRAMME. COURTESY OF THE ARTIST AND LISSON GALLERY. PHOTO: GG ARCHARD,
2022; © YAYOI KUSAMA COURTESY OTA FINE ARTS AND VICTORIA MIRO. PHOTO: CROSSRAIL