TfL launches mural at Brixton Underground station by artist Rudy Loewe to celebrate the area’s people and history

Transport for London (TfL) has launched a new mural artwork at Brixton Underground station by London-based artist Rudy Loewe. A celebration of the local area and its people, the mural is on display for a year and the ninth in a series of commissions at the station by artists including Claudette Johnson, Denzil Forrester, Joy Labinjo and Njideka Akunyili Crosby.

The Congregation, which spans the entrance of Brixton Underground station, channels the narrative energy of comics, combining text and image with vivid colour to honour Brixton’s history as a place of resistance and community gathering, particularly for London’s Black communities. It features 20 scenes celebrating the figures and history of Brixton, weaving in stories from archival research and interviews, visualising the rich, sensorial experience of the area.

The mural pays tribute to figures and communities that have shaped the local area, with depictions of the Windrush Generation’s arrival in the late 1940s and SisterMatic, a sound system that started in the 1980s providing a safe space for Black lesbian women. Other sitters include TfL train operator CJ River and their child, and activist Marcia Rigg in ‘Holding the Flame’, a virtual statue in memory of her brother, Sean Rigg, who died in police custody at Brixton Police Station in 2008.

The new work features local landmarks, places and cultural spaces, such as the 121 Centre on Railton Road, where activist Olive Morris once lived, the large brutalist-style housing association Southwyck House and artist Pearl Alcock’s underground bar for Black gay men in the 1990s. It also highlights daily acts of intergenerational gathering, joy and care, showing people chatting outside spiritual shop The Powerful Hand, queues outside popular Jamaican restaurant Healthy Eaters, teenage girls walking through the streets, women shopping with young children at the market on Electric Avenue and men chatting in Windrush Square.

The series of commissions at Brixton Tube station, of which The Congregation is the ninth, was initiated in 2018 and invites artists to respond to the diverse narratives of the area, in recognition of the local murals painted in Brixton in the 1980s. The previous mural, Three Women, was by the renowned British artist and Turner Prize 2024 nominee Claudette Johnson, and was a new triptych of Black female figures. The work was nominated for a Sky Arts Award in 2025.

Artist Rudy Loewe, said: “For my Art on the Underground commission, I wanted to capture the aliveness of Brixton. As soon as you step out of the Tube station, there’s such a rich sensorial experience and it was this that I wanted to transmute into painting. There are preachers, loud music, people singing; you can hardly walk down the street without having an unexpected conversation with someone. It makes it a very special place in London. To me, there is something about all of this that is so West Indian and that I wanted to foreground.”

Eleanor Pinfield, Head of Art on the Underground, said: “Across our series of commissions for the station, artists have presented varying approaches to capturing Brixton. In The Congregation, Loewe distils the complexity of social, architectural, individual and generational histories, particularly of the Black community, into a hugely rich work sprawling across space and time. Millions of people will enjoy these vivid depictions of Brixton life and, perhaps, learn more about scenes featured in the work as they travel through the station.”

Justine Simons OBE, Deputy Mayor for Culture and the Creative Industries, said: “Rudy Loewe’s mural beautifully tells the story of Brixton past and present. A rich history of activism and community bought to life through glorious technicolour. Another unmissable commission from our world-renowned Art on the Underground collection, making sure art and culture play their part helping us to build a better London for everyone.”

James Reed CBE, Chairman and Chief Executive of Reed, sponsor of Art of the Underground, said: “I am very excited to see Rudy Loewe's fantastically detailed and vibrant new painting for Brixton station. Discovering art on the Underground brings unexpected joy to commuters and as a Londoner myself I feel that this work captures the historical, social and cultural significance of Brixton in making London the city that it is today.”

The commission is accompanied by a series of oral history audio recordings with participants CJ Rivers, SisterMatic (Eddie Lockhart & Yvonne Taylor) and Marcia Rigg. Art on the Underground, Loewe, Rivers, Lockhart, Taylor and Rigg will host an evening of conversation and film screenings at Brixton’s Ritzy cinema on 27 November.

This year Art on the Underground has celebrated its 25th anniversary. Since its inception in 2000, the programme has had a renowned history of commissioning site-specific artworks across the city. The changing programme of temporary works, alongside groundbreaking permanent pieces, including Alexandre da Cunha's kinetic sculpture at Battersea Power Station Underground Station and Mark Wallinger's Labyrinth across the London Underground network, speak to people, places, and histories, placing trust in artists and the creative process.

Earlier in the year, a large-scale artwork launched at Stratford station in September by artist Ahmet Öğüt, a sound artwork played at Waterloo London Underground station for a fortnight in July, along the moving walkway between the Jubilee and Northern lines, and a new pocket Tube map, with a cover designed by Agnes Denes, launched in June.