Art Below - an enterprise that organises art exhibitions within select underground stations across London - are launching a new show this week to coincide with the London Art Fair which runs from the 18th-22nd in Angel tube station.

Angel underground’s main corridor which leads towards the third largest tube station in western Europe will be used to display the works submitted by some of the UK’s most eminent contemporary artists including Sarah Maple, a British-born Muslim artist, feminist and winner of the Channel 4 and Charles Saatchi organised ‘4 New Sensations’ competition. Sarah’s self-described ‘tongue-in-cheek’ works have caused critics to deem her as the heir to Tracey Emin’s YBA crown. She frequently uses herself as model in her pictures in order to develop the narrative of the relationship between a young British Muslim female in a vanity-fuelled, image-obsessed and spiritually stricken media culture.

Also showing is Johan Anderson, whose portrait of Amy Winehouse caught widespread media attention when it was recently displayed in Camden Town tube station soon after the singer’s death. Anderson starred in Sky TV’s ‘The Art of Survival; a programme tracing the journey of four penniless artists who are dumped in Italy and left to find their own way home using their artistic talents and imaginative resources. Anderson’s latest collection of portraits, ‘Future Faces’, focuses on the portraits of people who - because of their looks, background or social habits- don’t ‘fit’ into society, standing “both in defiance and pride (and) celebrating diversity in the knowledge that we are all uniquely made”. His paintings are naturalistic, up-close, personal and intense. You will have the opportunity to watch Anderson in action as he is doing a live painting performance throughout the exhibition.

Also painting live will be Inkie, associated with the infamous and trend-setting Banksy, Inkie’s neon illustrations are inspired by comic-book graphics, street-graffiti and, rather unexpectedly, French Art Nouveau artist Alphonse Mucha. Another Banksy-inspired ambiguously named artist known as Schoony will be contributing to the exhibition with his anti-war and deliberately provocative ‘boy soldiers’ sculptures.

Then there is the most incendiary of them all; with Lora Hristova’s disquieting images of females in sexually explicit poses digitally manipulated in order to nullify pornography’s intent and make you feel more disturbed and shameful rather than in the least bit aroused. Psychoanalytic and partly autobiographical, the works - although initially shocking and uncomfortable to look at- are engaging and mask an underlying sensitive and child-like inner voice. Her work gravitates around the destruction and degradation of innocence, as she chillingly blanks out the faces of both children and adults leaving a ghostly, monstrous form that foreshadows a grim, anxiety-ridden future due to pornography’s merciless consumption of women. Cripes knows how they’re going to display that one in Angel tube station, but go and see for yourself. Prints of the pictures will line the walls and the originals will be on show just round the corner at Candid Arts Trust. Art of Angel exhibition opens this Thursday 19th January.

For more, check out:www.artbelow.org.uk/ab/Home.action

Words by Romy Carr