Ain Bailey: Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Art on the Underground will launch a new site-specific audio work at Waterloo Underground station by London-based composer, artist and DJ Ain Bailey with experimental vocalist and movement artist Elaine Mitchener.Bailey's first UK public artwork Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner undertakes an autobiographical mapping of London to reflect on the value of London’s cultural spaces and their place in shaping a personal identity. The artwork will be heard at Waterloo Underground station along the travelator connecting the Northern and Jubilee lines.
Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner is a 7-minute original audio work with accompanying visual artwork that draws from archival imagery of iconic London venues. It features a new libretto paying homage to more than 70 London premises that have been important to Ain Bailey through her lifetime, which are no longer open. Maybe It's Because I'm a Londoner is the third audio commission in a series for Waterloo Underground station with the Mayor of London's Culture and Community Spaces at Risk programme. The artist was directly inspired by a register of more than 1,500 at-risk cultural spaces in London, whom the Mayor has supported since 2016. Offering an autobiographical response, Bailey indexes spaces that have had a meaningful presence in her life - from mythical clubs of her teens, loose groupings of community spaces, record shops, LGBTQI+ bars, to the Virgin Megastore, and Brixton Neighbourhood Community Association, established by her family in 1971. Expanding from the emotional resonances of Gregg’s popular song and playing on its nostalgic undertones, Bailey evokes distinct eras, scenes and postcodes characterising London, particularly during the 90s and 00s. As she has said, the artwork ‘honours what used to be for me, a story of transformation over more than five decades.’
📍 Waterloo Underground Station
@artontheunderground @tfl
London
29 June - 10 July 2026
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