East End Promise celebrates the ever-changing visual and cultural landscape with particular emphasis on the ‘cultural migrants’ who made this area their home from the early 80s onwards. Many artists and musicians moved into the derelict, industrial area to the east of the city in the 80s and early 90’s with a Do It Yourself ethos which had as much to do with necessity as choice. They turned warehouses into galleries, squats into raves and ‘The Ditch’, as it was once known, into the sub-cultural Mecca it is today.
We view these ‘migrants’ (artists, musicians, bar/club owners, writers, designers, architects and developers, gallerists, curators and freeloaders) as having a trans-historical alliance with all those who came before – part of a continuous migration and diaspora into/ out of the East End. The latter as a huge sprawling studio: an experiment in living and working in a disorderly, messy, heterogeneous and evolutionary way.
The exhibition assembles for the first time, individuals, groups and spaces from different occupations and different timelines, past, present and future. Curated by Paul Sakoilsky and Ernesto Leal (original concept/co-curator), it takes the form of a multi-layered installation, including art, photography, film/video, music, text, audio, archival and architectural elements, contemporary publications and ephemera.
