The East London Group returns to the Nunnery Gallery with a new collection of paintings, selected and curated by writer & broadcaster Michael Rosen and radio producer & film-maker Emma-Louise Williams. Working during the interwar period, the East London Group of artists comprised ordinary working men and women, attending art classes and exhibiting their paintings. There were 35 members – including Walter Sickert, Phyllis Bray, William Coldstream, John Cooper, Elwin Hawthorne, the Steggles brothers, Brynhild Parker, Henry Silk and Albert Turpin.

Rosen and Williams have selected more than 50 works for exhibition, with a special focus on little-known works by Albert Turpin. Turpin was not only a critically acclaimed artist but a prominent figure in local politics, as a leading force in the East End anti-fascist movement and Mayor of Bethnal Green. His works tell the story of the East End’s resilience through a turbulent time of war and peace and will be shown alongside sketchbooks and political pamphlets that haven’t been seen for 70 years, providing a vivid and contextual narrative to the paintings.

Accompanying the exhibition will be a series of new commissions by artists working in east London today, highlighting recognisable sites in the paintings surrounding the Nunnery Gallery. Walking tours of the local area will guide visitors around these new public artworks, finishing at Queen Mary University of London – which has supported the new commissions – where remnants of a mural painting by East London Group member Phyllis Bray can still be seen in the People’s Palace.

This exhibition, with its wealth of previously un-exhibited material, sheds new light on many of the characters of the group, who were accomplished artists – lauded by the art world – but also active war artists, heroes of east London politics and avid chroniclers of the changing face of the London of their time.

Image: Salmon and Ball, AE Turpin (courtesy the artist’s family, copyright A.E. Turpin Estate, 2017)