Limited edition print of Casa Blue in Brick Lane, London
£120
48cm x41cm image size not including the white boarder paper
A print of Casa Blue which is situated on the corner of Brick Lane and Bethnal Green Road in London’s East End.
Now many people say that London is the hippest city in the world. And if London is indeed the most hippest city in the world, then the most hippest area in the most hippest city in the world are the areas of Shoreditch, Spitalfields and Brick Lane which is where this street corner is. But it wasn’t always like that.
I don’t know why the gods of cool blessed this particular part of London, I expect there are a number of reasons and a fair smattering of just chaotic cockney luck. There are, however, a few things that may have been significant. In the 1990s it became a very a popular area with artists who have since become legends. Artists such as Damian Hirst and Tracey Emin who still has a house in this part of London. They were attracted by the large cheap studio spaces for rent which were once light engineering factories. And as any social scientist will tell you, once creatives start frequenting an area it’s not long before fashion follows.
A big influence too was the opening of the ‘White Cube Gallery’ in Hoxton Square in 2000 which suddenly put this rather shabby part of the capital on the map to those from the West End. In fact, it can be said that Hoxton Square was the embryonic location of the ‘new look’ East End and its tentacles of trendiness have spread far and wide to this corner of Brick Lane and beyond. Put simply, in the 1960s it was Soho and Carnaby Street, and today, it’s this knot of scruffy streets and bars.
Despite high rises springing up all over the place, much of the ochre brick architecture is the same as it was in the 1800s when Jack the Ripper was roaming these streets. I can’t think how it managed to survive this long. They somehow dodged the Luftwaffe and the post war planners too. It was probably not worth knocking down at the time. Thankfully, they did survive and these small shop fronts lend themselves to entrepreneurial bars, shops and businesses which all adds to the appeal.
48 in stock
