Pure Class

About

Exhibition: 6th-14th August, 12-6pm

Private View: Friday 5th August, 6-9pm

Pure Class Poetry: Wed 10th August, 7-9pm

Pure Class challenges the hierarchy of taste and contradicts the pre-packaged, one-dimensional image of what it is to be working class. The show proposes social class as a lens through which to critique access to representation and inclusion by highlighting a spectrum of working-class artists, who span a range of intersecting identities. The work exhibited is as diverse as it is ambitious, and serves as a celebration of the multifaceted, pluralistic identity of working class people. 

The various approaches of artists range from the immediate to the meditative; the ephemeral to the concrete, across multiple disciplines, including sculpture, painting, installation, performance and moving image. The work engages with issues as diverse as fatness, complex familial relationships, death, and care. Through relationships with one another as well as relationships with the digital and the natural world, the artists explore what solidarity looks like in all its possible forms.

East London has a long standing working class history, home to residents who have been consistently undervalued and forgotten yet have tirelessly fought for their rights. So too though has Bethnal Green been an area where joy and community has thrived. Home to the charitable Pearly Kings and Queens, the Working Men’s Club which is now a thriving Queer venue and some of the best pubs in London, there could be no better home for this year’s rendition of Pure Class.