URBAN CONTEMPORARIES
IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF
THE EAST LONDON GROUP
Frank Creber and Ferha Farooqui, curators of The Urban Contemporaries Group, are proud to announce an exciting exhibition in collaboration with Alan Waltham and the Nunnery Gallery, in Bow. Hope you can come along and see this extraordinary show at the Nunnery Gallery - 4th October to 22nd December 2024!
'In the footsteps of the East London Group' - will bring together around 30 original paintings by the former East London Group alongside 22 original works by contemporary painters responding to the theme. The artists will include members of the Urban Contemporaries group and invited artists - including DAVID HEPHER, DOREEN FLETCHER, BEN JOHNSON, TIMOTHY HYMAN RA, PHILIPPA BEALE,
MARC GOODERHAM, JAMES MACKINNON, HARRIET MENA HILL, AMONGST MANY OTHER FABULOUS ARTISTS!!
The historic East London Group began with evening painting classes in Bethnal Green; made up of mostly 'working-class men and women', the group painted what surrounded them – the East End – capturing their city in a way never previously seen. The accompanying contemporary works explore a city changing at an even faster rate, capturing the buildings that have been dismantled and recreated, the historic remnants that defiantly remain and delving into the the artists' personal encounters with the urban experience.
This exhibition is curated by ALAN WALTHAM (Curator of the East London Group), FERHA FAROOQUI, FRANK CREBER AND THE NUNNERY GALLERY.
A newly commissioned sound piece, made by @_felixtaylor, will also provide an atmospheric soundscape to the exhibition.
📅 4th October 2024 – 22nd December 2024
📍 Nunnery Gallery, London, E3 2SJ
1. detail of painting ©East London Group - 'Bryant and May’s, Grace Oscroft (undated)'
2. detail of painting ©Doreen Fletcher - 'Lost in Spitalfields'
THE LIMPING MAN CLUE
The Limping Man Clue
Frank Creber
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 85 x 130cm
Date: 2024
I chose to paint the Guardian Angels Church in Mile
End in response to the painting by Elwin Hawthorne.
The narrative in my painting comes from a story in the
East London Advertiser, Saturday 27 May, 1939:
LIMPING MAN CLUE. Four Years for Mile End
Cigarette Theft. A hole big enough for a man to
fit through was knocked in the basement wall of a
Mile End shop. 280,000 cigarettes, valued at £607,
were stolen. A horse and a loaded cart led by a man
with a limp were seen from the rear of the shop.
I set out to make a painting about Mile End with the
church and the Yellow Bridge. At the same time, I was
researching the work of the East London Group and,
considering the experience of people living in East
London in the 1930s, I wanted to make a connection
across the ninety years of time. I began looking
at newspaper stories of East London in the 1930s,
looking for an eye-catching story that could become
a narrative for the painting. The story about the thief
who stole cigarettes was unusually visual, and grabbed
my imagination.
The Guardian Angels, Elwin Hawthorne (1931)
An archive photo of the scene exists which shows this view. Elwin’s notes detail that it was painted ‘from corner
of Cottage Grove’. Sold from exhibition, it resurfaced at auction on the continent some years ago and now
resides back in the UK.
While painting has never gone away, contemporary painting is often presented alongside other media such as 3D, film, installation. One motivation for the artists of the Urban Contemporaries is to create exhibitions made up purely of paintings and so to offer an opportunity to weigh the qualities and virtues of the medium. It presents the ways contemporary painters continue to develop their language, finding links to the past and applying them to living, contemporary subject matter.
It is the energy and tension of modern life in a city that drives the work of the Urban Contemporaries. In examining particular places and scenes of the city environment, the group offers a meditation on the way we are now. The metropolis acts as a metaphor for humanity, reflecting achievement, fun and hope, but also a darkness and uncertainty.
The artists all start by working from observation. And for some this is the principal activity, creating works that meticulously record from life so that every part of the painting’s surface is active and contributing to the whole. Others edit and refine the raw record to create elusive work with internal narrative, introducing another kind of imagination to the viewer. The elements they use derive from their environment but the spaces created in the paintings are closer to allegory or myth, invention is more strongly a feature of their paintings. Work from these artists gives a symbolic, sometimes apocalyptic, dimension to the group.
The artists who make up the 16 Urban Contemporaries and the invited guest artists offer dynamic, thought provoking contemplations of the city environment, and the, predominantly, figurative nature of the works make them accessible to all audiences.
OTHER SHOWS BY URBAN CONTEMPORARIES
SHOWS IN PARTNERSHIP WITH THE ARBOREALISTS