The Bermondsey Artists’ Group celebrate entering their fifth decade of bringing art to Bermondsey and beyond with B.A.G SHOW 2024 at Greatorex Street Gallery, Whitechapel.
Several artists in this exhibition met in Bermondsey in the late 1970s with more arriving over the years. They formed the Bermondsey Artists’ Group organising their first exhibition at the Chapter House of Southwark Cathedral in June 1983. This landmark exhibition showed work by about a dozen artists,some of whom are exhibiting here today. The success of this show and the need for a local exhibition spaceinstigated the transformation of the derelict cafe in Southwark Park which became the Cafe Gallery, now known as Southwark Park Galleries.
BAG artists organised and curatedgroup shows regularly in the Cafe Gallery until the 1990s, when they became a biennial fixture. They also put on off-site exhibitions and events at other venues and set up a longstanding exchange with Berlin artists through the 1990s, Kunstbrucke/ ArtBridge, culminating in 2000 with the Ark Show at Dilston Grove involving 100 London artists and 100 Berlin artists.
To celebrate the now 41 years of BAG’s existence a core of longstanding membershave come together at another venue in Whitechapel, where we will be channelling the energy and spirit of our inauguralexhibition.
Greatorex Street Gallery, 10 Greatorex St, London, E1 5NF from 27th November – 4th December. Admission: Free. Times: 11am – 5pm.
PV on 27th November 6-9pm.
Watch the documentary of the group’s history: https://youtu.be/Cz7pmf6Kouo
