Air Routes of the World (Night)

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Transport, Great Minster House, Marsham Street

At first glance, this screenprint together with its counterpart, 'Air Routes of the World (Day)', also in the Collection, appears as an abstract compositions of dots and lines, like constellations of stars. A closer inspection reveals that the images represent aerial maps similar to those usually found in in-flight magazines. Showing the domestic and international flight routes taken by an airline, the maps are aesthetically striking ways of conveying practical information. The ‘Night’ and ‘Day’ subtitle of each work are also suggested by the use of white on black and black on white.

Langlands & Bell are concerned with the systems by which our lives are controlled.  An earlier work, titled Air Routes in NW Europe (Night and Day), is described as ‘an image and effigy of some obscure force, abstract and elusive: an image not only of speed, but of the whole system of control over human travel’ (Serpentine Gallery exhibition catalogue, 1997).

Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell met as students at Middlesex Polytechnic in 1978 and have worked in collaboration ever since. Their practice is primarily concerned with the relationships between people and the architecture in which we live our lives. They have said ‘we shape our buildings, and thereafter they shape us.’ Langlands and Bell have exhibited widely around the world, including exhibitions in Tokyo at TN Probe (1998) and CCA Kitakyushu (1997 and 2020-21). In the late 1990s, they were part of the group of artists known at the time as the ‘Young British Artists’, and their works featured in the 'Sensation' touring exhibition that opened at the Royal Academy in 1997. In the same year, a major touring exhibition of their work from 1986–1996 featured at the Serpentine Gallery, London, the Grey Art Gallery in New York and the Kunsthalle, Bielefeld. In 2004, the artists’ exhibition, 'The House of Osama Bin Laden' won a BAFTA Award in the category of Interactive Arts Installation. The exhibition was shown at the Imperial War Museum, London and the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin. Since 2008, solo exhibitions of Langlands and Bell’s work include shows in London, Edinburgh, Birmingham, Kitakyushu and Accra.

Places

Subjects

flight path, aeroplane, conceptual art, night

Materials & Techniques

screenprint

Artist

Langlands and Bell (1955;1959 - )

Title

Air Routes of the World (Night)

Edition

A/P VI/XI

Date

2001

Medium

Screenprint

Dimensions

height: 83.90 cm, width: 143.80 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from Alan Cristea Gallery, November 2010

Inscription

verso bc: Langlands & Bell 2000 AP VI/XI

Provenance

Alan Cristea Gallery, London

GAC number

18370/2