Platform for Art is an enterprising scheme to install art works at various sites on the London Underground network. Most of these art works take the form of billboards or posters. It began with the redundant District Line platform at Gloucester Road station, which has hosted a series of billboards. Other Platform for Art projects in 2004 have included Mark Titchner, Muntean/Rosenblum and Emma Kay.

Emma Kay was commissioned by Platform for Art to produce a new work of art for the front cover of the pocket Tube map that is given away free at Tube stations. The project was a collaboration with Frieze Art Fair. Kay’s simple but effective design uses the Tube line colours to create a target image. The image makes subtle art historical references to other artists (such as Jasper Johns and Kenneth Noland) who famously made target paintings. It also makes a subtle appeal to memory – the colours of the Tube map are very familiar, but are presented here in an unfamiliar format. Kay’s work has been much concerned with our common history, and with distortions and omissions of memory.

This is a circuit poster, used at locations across the tube network to advertise the Platform for Art projects to travellers