A shortlist of 23 artists has been announced for this year’s East London Painting Prize.
Work by the artists is to go on show at Bow Arts Trust’s new artists’ studios The Rum Factory, a Grade II-listed former rum warehouse in Wapping that used to be part of News International’s printworks.
The prize winner will announced on 13 May, and will receive £10,000 in cash and a solo exhibition at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow.
The East London Painting Prize, now in its second year, celebrates the diversity and talent of artists who live or work in East London and is run by Bow Arts Trust and The Legacy List.
Last year’s winner was Nathan Eastwood, whose winning painting, Nico’s Café, was an Edward Hopper-inspired image of an elderly man eating alone in a greasy spoon café.
One of the judges Lizzie Neilson, Director of Zabludowicz Collection which supports the prize, said: “We had to be hard-nosed to get to this succinct group but I think there is a strength is showing the best of the best. Seeing these excellent paintings in the flesh was a fantastic experience and left me invigorated, as the breadth of painting practice in the East End of London is just staggering.”
Rosamond Murdoch, Director of Bow Arts Trust’s Nunnery Gallery, added: “East London is a hotbed of talent and the painters shortlisted for this year’s prize are a distillation of that quality.”
The shortlisted artists are:
Hackney
Michael Ajerman, Steven Allan, David Caines, Anna Freeman Bentley, Andrew Hladky, Kate Lyddon, Cathy Lomax, Lee Maelzer, Judith Rooze, Mimei Thompson
Newham
Peter Donaldson, Marie Jacotey-Voyatzis
Redbridge
Luke Rudolf
Tower Hamlets
Hannah Brown, Cyrus Shroff, Caroline Walker, Willem Weismann, Emily Wolfe, Vivien Zhang
Waltham Forest
Benjamin Doherty, Katrin Maeurich, David Ben White, Josephine Wood