New Road, Whitechapel, 1976.
Fieldgate Festival, 1976.
Fieldgate Festival, 1976.
St Hilda’s Community Centre, Club Row, 1975.
St Hilda’s Community Centre, Club Row, 1975.
In 1974 the Greater London Arts Association proposed importing professional artists to create giant posters for display in Tower Hamlets. Infuriated at being sidelined, local artists called for a more relevant, bolder plan, bringing together existing and fledgling arts activities under a coordinating body to be called the Tower Hamlets Arts Project (THAP). THAP’s launch exhibition ‘The Big Show’, Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1976.
Much to the displeasure of the director, Nicholas Serota, THAP celebrated its achievements with the month-longʻ’Big Show’ at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Critics were bemused at finding this international venue, which had presented the works of Picasso and Frida Kahlo, awash with East End poets publishing work with inky Roneo printers, Stepney filmmakers, amateur rock bands, truanting schoolkids, improvised theatre shows, community photography projects and some very messy experiments in silkscreen printing. Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1976.
‘Banging out’ a newly fledged printer with generous additions of ink, glue, paper and, of course, lager. Shoreditch, 1980.
Queuing for Christmas dinner. Someone stole the Nativity in the foreground when the shelter closed a few days later. Crisis at Christmas, Whitechapel, 1979.
