Phoebe Boswell | 'we move through scales of blue'

we move through scales of blue is a series of four new large-scale artworks by artist Phoebe Boswell for the escalators at Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Gate stations, on view from March 2026.

Phoebe Boswell’s multidisciplinary practice includes, but is not limited to, painting, drawing, video, animation, sound and interactivity. Her figurative artworks explore freedom, grief, intimacy and migration through a Black feminist diasporic lens and denote a commitment of care for how we see ourselves and each other.

Her recent work has considered bodies of water as both repositories of painful historical experience and sites of renewal and hope. we move through scales of blue convenes these ideas, exploring water as a container for resistance, joy, remembrance and possibility.

The Tube shares its space beneath the city with a labyrinth of lost rivers and waterways. Notting Hill Gate runs close to the course of the River Westbourne and Bethnal Green to the River Walbrook. Both rivers were diverted underground in the nineteenth century paralleling the development of the Tube which diverted the flow of passengers beneath London’s surface in the same period.

we move through scales of blue traces the notion of the waterway, evoking aquatic journeys and migratory routes to, from, and within London. Guided by the hydro-feminist view that all bodies of water are connected, this new work is conceived as ‘a call to the surface’ – an invitation to a collective consciousness about the world we inhabit. This builds on Boswell’s ongoing practice of reclaiming water for Black diasporic communities, after she encountered the Black Swimming Association’s statistic that 96% of Black British adults don’t swim.

Following a call out to local swimming communities, we move through scales of blue features multi-layered photographic tableaus of Black swimmers who have made London their home, or whose families have migrated here across generations. Boswell gathered reflections from participants about their relationship with water, creating space for their stories and inviting us to consider those held within our own bodies.

Participants were photographed underwater, responding intuitively to prompts from Boswell. Utilising traditional stop-frame animation techniques, Boswell has layered still images into complex sequences which are brought to life by passengers’ movement up and down the escalators. This echoes early forms of moving image, where the illusion of movement is created through a sequence of still images. At Bethnal Green and Notting Hill Gate stations, it is both the escalator and the people travelling on it that combine to animate the work.

With we move through scales of blue, Boswell asks us to consider water as a site of endurance, migratory trauma, healing and collective agency.

With deep thanks to the participants: Adesola Adegbembo, Hannah Algahli, Titilayo Ayeni, Zahara Chaker-Jones, Norma Campbell, Topher Cambpell, Tukya Campbell, Sharon & Lillea James, Elliot Kennedy, Lewis McCormack, Buitumelo Kotekwa Mushekwa, Khadija Niang, Alanna O’Garro, Ekow Oliver, Sankara O’Garro, Hani Salih, Lorna Soar & Sarah Whyte.