Conditions of Living: Home and Homelessness in London’s East End

About

Our major new exhibition opens at Four Corners Gallery on 30 June. Conditions of Living: Home and Homelessness in London's East End takes a visual journey from workhouses to slum clearances, tower blocks and homeless shelters, to explore how photographs have represented these conditions for over a century. It includes little-known histories such as the tenants' rent strikes of the 1930s, post-war squatting, and 'bonfire corner', a meeting place for homeless people at Spitalfields Market for over twenty years.

The exhibition features new work by artist Anthony Luvera, which addresses the rise of economic segregation in housing developments in Tower Hamlets, with the phenomenon known as 'poor doors'. Also titled Conditions of Living, this socially engaged artwork by Luvera is built on extensive research into the social, political and economic contexts behind the rise of market-driven 'affordable' housing provision and the state of social housing today, and is created in collaboration with a community forum of local residents who live in the buildings themselves. 

The exhibition is accompanied by a series of talks and screenings, that will discuss the work in the context of campaigns for housing justice.