Our exhibition will feature the work of David Bomberg and his students at the Borough Polytechnic. Bomberg held evening classes from 1945 that attracted a diverse group of individuals seeking to escape the traditional art school format. Students included Leon Kossoff and Frank Auerbach, but the artists most associated with the classes were perhaps those who went on to form the Borough Group and subsequent Borough Bottega. Our exhibition will shed light on Bomberg's influence and methods, but also on how individual artists developed their own styles after leaving the classes. Often criticised during the 1960s for being derivative, and certainly out of step with the prevailing Pop and early conceptual art movement, we hope to offer a reassessment of the artists' qualities and also assert Bomberg's pre-eminence as a teacher.
Our exhibition will include works by Bomberg and Kossoff, as well as works by Dorothy Mead, Cliff Holden, Miles Richmond, Dennis Creffield, Susanna Richmond, Anthony Hatwell, Lilian Bomberg, Garth Scott, Leslie Marr, Richard Michelmore, Philip Holmes and Cecil Bailey. A catalogue will be produced containing texts by Paul Treweha, Leslie Marr and Susan Sluggett – an artist who recently had a residency at the Borough Road Gallery and who will explain the contemporary relevance of our exhibition.
"This is an historic exhibition. It is the first time in 70 years - two generations - that work of one of the most important teaching and exhibiting groups of British artists immediately after the Second World War can be seen together in London in the Mayfair area." - Paul Trewhela