APRIL 2025 · PATINA

Underground station

Aldwych Underground Station, London

Aldwych station closed in 1994. It is not a ruin — it is a suspension. The platforms, the tunnels, the curved tile walls: all in place, all intact, all thirty years empty. You come in and the infrastructure is completely present and the trains are not.

Empty underground platform with curved ceiling, railway tracks, and tiled walls — Thirty years of no passengers

— A suspension not a ruin

Tile is the first thing. Station-green on the platforms, cream in the corridors, the pattern continuous, uninterrupted. Thirty years of no passengers has not damaged it — it has simply continued to be what it was, which is unusual for abandonment. Most empty spaces deteriorate. This one has been maintained in its emptiness, which makes it strange in a different way.

You come in and the station is completely present and the trains are not.
Aldwych Underground Station — April 2025

Spiral staircase with gridded balustrades viewed from above — Concentric circles, no one descending

— What the tile holds

The ochre patina on the vintage railings. The spiral staircase, viewed from above, its gridded balustrades forming concentric circles. Long perspectives down arched tunnels, the light at the end of each corridor giving way to darkness. The red door receding down a curved passage — concrete tunnel supports, metal fixtures, the door at the end of nothing that is currently in use.

Gentlemen's door in green with white tile surround and underground map on wall — A period map, an unused door

— Doors to nothing

A green door marked Gentlemen's, with white tile surround and an underground map on the wall beside it. The map is period. The door has not been used in thirty years. An image of rusted and corroded metal — a door frame with peeling paint, the decay layered, the surface recording time in a way the tile does not.

Rusted and corroded metal door frame with peeling paint and decay — Surface recording time the tile does not

— The audience that never comes

The vintage advertisements are still on the platform walls. Concentric tunnel arches receding into the empty platform, the advertisements visible along the perspective. No trains. No passengers. The adverts are for things that no longer exist, or companies that no longer trade, addressing an audience that no longer comes.