In the Footsteps of the East London Group E-Book

The Nunnery Gallery

• Herausgeber: Batsford
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 90

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Based on an exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery held in autumn 2024, In the Footsteps of the East London Group brings together 35 original paintings by members of the East London Group, paired with 22 new interpretations and responses from contemporary painters including David Hepher, Doreen Fletcher and Tim Craven. The East London Group were a group of artists who created paintings in the 1920s and 30s of buildings, streets, and London life. They were mostly working class, realist painters whose formal education had often stopped at an early age. The group developed from an art club at the Bethnal Green Men's Institute to a group of painters who exhibited alongside prominent artists of the day and attracted enormous press coverage and support. They were taught by Walter Sickert, John Albert Cooper, Phyllis Bray, and others. Curated by the Urban Contemporaries Group, a London-based collective who are interested in exploring the urban experience, the exhibition features 35 original paintings by members of the East London Group alongside 22 contemporary paintings inspired by them, from leading artists working in the urban landscape tradition, including Timothy Hyman, Philippa Beale, Nicole Poh and Marc Gooderham. Each artist selected for the show has a respect and curiosity for the history of the area and for these paintings made on the streets of Bow a hundred years ago, and which open a window onto the past life of east London and an earlier period in British art. This fascinating book brings together all the images from the exhibition in print, showcasing surprising pairings of paintings from a group of artists that are steadily growing in popularity and reputation with fresh interpretations from a new generation of painters.

Leseprobe

Contents

Foreword by Sophie Hill

Introduction by Ferha Farooqui and Frank Creber

Introduction by Alan Waltham

North Face I, David Hepher

Lost in Spitalfields, Doreen Fletcher

Moving East, Ben Johnson

The Limping Man Clue, Frank Creber

Lost Highway, Ferha Farooqui

Wicked, Sarah Lowe

Cambridge Heath Road, Michael Johnson

Trinity Green Chapel, Grant Watson

Tate and Lyle Factory, Silvertown, Alex Pemberton

West India Dock (boundary between here and there), Alexandra Blum

Bow Back Rivers Algae Bloom, Fiona McIntyre

After Harold Steggles, Memories St Mark’s Church and Mare Street, Philippa Beale

Bethnal Green and East India Docklands (Triptych), Hilary Rosen

Austerity, Dehumanisation, Disappearance, Nicole Poh

View of Canonbury Tower, Summer 2023, Melissa Scott-Miller

Under Canonbury Tower, Timothy Hyman, R.A.

Regent’s Canal (Grove Road), Tim Craven

Afternoon Light, Antill Road, Marc Gooderham

Sparrows Can’t Sing, Annette Fernando

Clarissa House (Poplar), Harriet Mena Hill

Tower – Bryant and May Building, Gethin Evans

Blue Bridge, Wilton Way, Hackney, James Mackinnon

Artist biographies

About the curators

Acknowledgements

Picture credits

About the Nunnery Gallery

Foreword

by Sophie Hill, the Nunnery Gallery

It is said that there is a higher concentration of artists in East London than in any other city in Europe. Artists have made, and continue to make, East London one of the most creative and culturally diverse areas of the city, and the East London Group (ELG) is an integral thread in this history.

Bow Arts has been supporting East London’s artist community for thirty years, providing affordable studios and a free public exhibition space at the Nunnery Gallery. The gallery programme explores the stories of East London, and we were proud to exhibit one of the first retrospectives of the East London Group back in 2014. As an organization with a growing and thriving artist community, celebrating today’s artistic talent is incredibly important, so to bring together paintings from both East London’s past and its present feels very meaningful indeed.

The East London Group continually captivates our audience’s imagination, as they lived, worked and painted on the streets surrounding the gallery. Breaking the mould of a patronized or wealthy artist, many painted alongside their day jobs – window cleaner, basket weaver, errand boy – making art when they could and where they could, as many of our artists still do today. They painted the streets, buildings and corners of East London as it was the area that surrounded them, capturing fleeting and much-loved scenes, many of which have since changed or disappeared and might otherwise have been forgotten.

Their work consistently found beauty in areas that traditionally would not have been painted: a timber yard, railway arches, or what were then industrial backwaters. This love of locality and the ability to capture the essence of the East End is what transcends time in these pictures, summoning lines, shadows and light that convey such personal reminiscence, yet appeal to so many. This recognizability of streets that are familiar yet were painted years ago bewitches our audiences each time we exhibit these paintings.

Showing these historical works alongside contemporary interpretations of the same, or similarly inspired, scenes is a very special exploration. Not only is it an exercise in ‘then’ and ‘now’, but also a celebration of the artist’s perspective in bringing a place alive, by igniting seemingly mundane bricks and mortar with memory and experience. As the East London Group artists enabled their streets to sing, so do the artists of the Urban Contemporaries Group, filling scenes with emotion, stories and the communities that thrive within them.

In a city that is changing perhaps faster than ever before, the Urban Contemporaries and invited artists are also consciously immortalizing scenes and buildings that may very well disappear. Even the streets that surround the Nunnery Gallery look very different to those we moved into nearly thirty years ago. It is with double intrigue that visitors will peer into these paintings, exploring the East London of the 1920s and 30s – wondering at the quiet street in Grace Oscroft’s Old Houses, Bow (here), which today has the Bow flyover and A12 thundering past – but also pausing to reflect on how East London is changing today, as Harriet Mena Hill remembers the recently demolished Clarissa House (Poplar) (here). Both sites shown in these pictures are a short walk from the gallery.

This will be the third exhibition that the Nunnery Gallery has hosted showcasing the East London Group paintings, together with exhibitions that have explored the streets and scenes of East London – our retrospective of Doreen Fletcher, who also shows work in this exhibition, being a notable one. These exhibitions have been some of our best attended. Locals who have long since moved out of East London travel back to reminisce in their streets. Newcomers marvel at the rich history and hidden corners that their new local area encompasses. Visitors of all ages are fascinated by how their city has changed and how it has not; how many little details have stayed the same, and how other scenes are barely recognizable. Either way, these are the houses and streets that have borne witness to the people passing across the ages, and they have each been immortalized by the emotive flourish of the artist’s brush.

Eastern Avenue, E15, Elwin Hawthorne (1932)Sold from exhibition in 1932, this painting subsequently appeared in a shop in Southwold some years ago. Elwin’s painting notes describe it as follows: ‘From Temple Mills Lane End. Church in distance: trees on left. Man sitting on fence. Two children in foreground. From near dog racing track.’

Introduction

by Ferha Farooqui and Frank Creber, curators of the Urban Contemporaries Group

The artist/curator-led journey for this exhibition commenced in summer 2022, when we first approached Alan Waltham, curator of a magnificent collection of original paintings by the East London Group (ELG). Our intention was to open a window to this group of early twentieth-century artists, as well as to the past life of East London, and an earlier time in British art, to juxtapose their paintings with works created by contemporary artists interested in reflecting upon the modern urban landscape.

Our brief was simple. We aimed to bring together around thirty-five original paintings by members of the East London Group and show them alongside twenty-two contemporary interpretations of the locations and themes that absorbed this earlier generation of British artists around the environments of Bow. Our geographical ‘footprint’ echoed that of the ELG and extended west as far as Canonbury (Islington), Bethnal Green and Spitalfields, and east to Stratford, including what is now the Olympic Park and surrounding areas.

The Nunnery Gallery’s programme pushes boundaries in exploring the stories of East London. Its vision, and its location in the pivotal centre of Bow, was a happy and wonderful happenstance, while the gallery’s previous support for two extraordinary and successful shows about the East London Group meant that we received their ready and generous support in bringing together the works of this early generation of painters to enable new audiences to examine their canvases next to contemporary artists working in the urban landscape tradition now.

The mainly working-class men and women artists of the ELG studied at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Institute. They were taught by some of the leading British modernist artists of their day, and were encouraged to explore their urban environment to develop a visual language that celebrated the beauty of the everyday.

We chose the contemporary artists involved in this exhibition because of their passion for creating work that responds to the urban condition. Each contemporary artist brought with them very personal encounters with the locations that inspired the East London Group of artists. Some were based on direct observations of the localities that inspired some of the ELG, whereas others offered social and biographical reflection – there have been myriad interpretations of the theme. Each contemporary artist chosen to be part of our venture brought with them a deep respect and curiosity for the history of East London, and for these paintings from a hundred years ago made on the streets of Bow and beyond by earlier artists who brought their innovative observations to everyday scenes of Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.

The medium of painting was significant because the Urban Contemporaries Group promotes painting as a unique form of engagement with the subject. The expressive quality of this medium enables a rendition, over time, of the subjectivity of the individual artist, shaped by their personal feelings and observations.

The curators’ aim has also been to offer a diversity of ‘voices’ by inviting an even mix of male and female artists from established, mid-career and early-career backgrounds, to ensure that different perspectives were conveyed. We were extraordinarily gratified that almost all the artists created new paintings specifically for this show, while others enthusiastically lent themselves to our endeavours by offering paintings that resonated strongly with the theme.

We are endlessly grateful to Alan Waltham for bringing together around thirty-five original paintings by the East London Group from collections around the country – a formidable task! We have been delighted to be offered the wonderful chance to capture this exhibition in a dedicated book of the show by Polly Powell of Batsford Books, who is the granddaughter of John Cooper and Phyllis Bray, members and champions of the East London Group.

The curators have been astounded by the enthusiasm with which this exhibition idea has been embraced by each artist. Each has also offered their own written reflections on their very individual approach, which the reader can enjoy later in the book.

We were delighted to be joined by David Hepher on this project. By happy coincidence, his magnificent painting North Face I (here), about the former Robin Hood Gardens in Poplar, was just being completed when we approached him with the idea for our show, which captured his imagination. Robin Hood Gardens is a nationally important and internationally recognized work of Brutalist architecture. Completed in 1972, the building was designed by Alison and Peter Smithson, British architects of international reputation. It has now been largely demolished as part of the redevelopment of the area. Our introduction of the East London Group to David stimulated a wonderful written response that captures the ‘disappearance’ from contemporary art history of these predominantly working-class artists of an earlier age.

It was gratifying to receive the support and involvement of Doreen Fletcher, an artist who is interested in the ‘pockets of life others ignore’. She paints East London and is constantly drawn to the dichotomy of change and permanence encapsulated in the one subject. Her painting Lost in Spitalfields (here