Tania Kovat’s artwork for Shadwell station was inspired by the physical site, the communities of Shadwell and the surrounding environment. The artist took advantage of a 'subterranean' site - a formerly disused escalator shaft - at the station to create an installation depicting an extensive root system. Root, a 12 metre long sculpture, is a cast of an enlarged root of the ubiquitous urban plant, Buddleia. The work alludes both to the remarkable tenacity of the buddleia as well as the wildflowers that are found extensively in urban wasteland and along railway tracks, while drawing on the DLR's role as an important inner-city network. Root also alludes to the communities within the East End who have relocated there, gaining a foothold in an area which has become home to Jews, Huguenots, Bangladeshis and Somalis over the past 200 years.
Root is part of DLR Art, the Public Art Programme for the Docklands Light Railway, curated and managed by Modus Operandi.
