#18 Artists in East London research project
50 stories from The Acme Archive
The Artists in East London website was published in November 2001. It was the product of a research project conducted by Acme Studios with the intention of providing an introduction to the history of artists in East London between 1960 and 2000, profiling artists and organisations who made a significant contribution to the visual arts in Britain in the early 2000s. The website had two main threads – the cultural changes of the 1960s that prompted the search for buildings, and the new generation of artists in the 1970s who moved to East London.
The website was structured around 10 key iconic locations in East London and involved contributions from those involved in those spaces to tell the stories. The locations were The Whitechapel Art Gallery, St Katherines Dock, Dilston Grove, Butlers Wharf, Devons Road, Martello Street, Beck Road, Rachel Whiteread’s House (on Grove Road in Bow), Copperfield Road and Hoxton Square. Of these locations, three (Devons Road, Beck Road and Copperfield Road) contribute to telling the early story of the development of Acme.
The website also contained a commissioned essay by Michael Archer “Oranges and Lemons and Oranges and Bananas”, which had previously been published in April 2001 as part of the feasibility study for the website, and a small video library of television clips relating to the stories.
While the website no longer exists, the content sourced and created for the website have been saved for the Acme Digital Archive.