In conversation: Nathan Eastwood - Everyday Realism?

Bow Arts presents East London Painting Prize winner Nathan Eastwood in conversation with Editor and Curator Matt Price to discuss Eastwood’s new body of work produced for his solo exhibition currently on show at the Nunnery. Entitled Work / Recreation / Freedom, the staging of the exhibition is Eastwood’s prize for winning the inaugural edition of the East London Painting Prize, 2014, along with £10,000 to support his practice.

Eastwood characteristically works in monochrome, his often dense, black, grey and white paintings – made using a time-consuming process with Humbrol enamel paints – depicting everyday scenes that he captures on his mobile phone. Often using his immediate environment of the East of London as source material, he portrays domestic and urban scenes of people going about their daily business, from cleaning the bathroom to clearing snow and ice from outside their homes. His paintings are often poetic and subdued, tinged with melancholy or simply the humdrum monotony of everyday chores. The works are understated, regularly capturing unremarkable scenes whilst creating something memorable and affecting in the process.

Eastwood’s work is thus a study of reality, of daily life in East London – what he describes as ‘kitchen sink’ painting. Inspired by the writings of Bertolt Brecht, Alain Badiou and John Berger, among others, Eastwood’s works explore ideas of the quotidian within the discourses of social realism and realist painting – topics that will be explored in the course of the in-conversation