Mychael Barratt’s Mile End Mural

Every time I walk down Mile End Rd, my attention always wanders to Mychael Barratt‘s mural high on the wall beyond Trinity Green Almshouses, conjuring the presiding spirits of this corner of Whitechapel. So I was delighted to visit Mychael’s studio under the railway arches in Bermondsey yesterday and meet the artist in person on the eve of his new exhibition which opens today at For Arts Sake.

“No artist can refuse a mural,” Mychael admitted to me with a grin and a shrug, introducing the unlikely story of the origin of his vast painting, executed over six weeks in the summer of 2011. When lawyers, TV Edwards, who have been established in the East End in the vicinity of the docks since 1929, were refused permission for a large advert on the side of their building, senior partner Anthony Edwards, saw the possibility for a creative solution to the bare wall in Mile End Rd. So, after noticing Mychael Barrett’s work on a hoarding while going over Blackfriars Bridge in a taxi, he gave the artist a call.

Mychael came to London from Canada in the eighties. “I was travelling around Europe and I was only supposed to stay in London for a week, but I never left,” he confessed to me. Yet Mychael’s Huguenot ancestors first came here three hundred years ago as refugees and the history of the capital has proved an enduring source of inspiration for his work. The centrepieces of his new exhibition are A London Map of Days, illustrating 395 events from the history on the city, and Sweet Thames, charting the path of the Thames lined with mud-larking finds.

Mychael at work on the mural in the summer of 2011

The mural was painted by Mychael Barratt, James Glover & Nicholas Middleton

1	George Bernard Shaw was an early member of the Fabian Society who regularly met on the Whitechapel Rd
2	William Booth started The Christian Mission and  The Salvation Army on the Mile End Rd
3	Captain James Cook lived at 88 Mile End Rd when not at sea
4	Prince Monolulu was a gambling tipster who frequented Petticoat Lane and Mile End Market with his famous call “I gotta horse!”
5	Frederick Charrington turned his back on his family’s brewery to start a temperance mission. He is here depicted taking a dray horse out of service
6	Dockers – This is loosely based on the statue of dockers at Victoria Dock
7	Vladimir Lenin planned the Russian Revolution in Whitechapel
8	Joseph Merrick also known as The Elephant Man was first publicly exhibited in London in a shop on the Whitechapel Rd across the street from the London Hospital
9	T V Edwards started the law firm T V Edwards in 1929
10	Anthony Edwards is the senior partner of T V Edwards. As a young boy he would accompany his uncle on his rounds, carrying his briefcase
11	Bushra Nasir studied at Queen Mary University and became the first Muslim headteacher of a state school
12	Mahatma Gandhi stayed at Kingsley Hall in 1931 when he came to London to discuss Indian independence
13	Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II visited the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 2009
14	Samuel Pepys frequented the Mile End Rd, as his diary attests and his mother was the daughter of a Whitechapel butcher
15	Isaac Rosenberg was a First World War poet and a painter who was one of a group of artists known as The Whitechapel Boys
16	Mark Gertler was another of The Whitechapel Boys
17	Edith Cavell trained as a nurse at London Hospital before working in German-occupied Belgium during World War I
18	Reggie & Ronnie Kray frequented The Blind Beggar.
19	David Hockney had his first exhibition at The Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1970
20	Scout This is my dog
21	Eric Gill’s sculptures grace the New People’s Palace on the Mile End Rd
22	Gilbert & George live nearby in Spitalfields
23	Market stalls that line the Mile End Rd
24	A reference to London’s docks
25	30 St Mary Axe also known as the Gherkin
26	Christ Church, Spitalfields, designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor
27	House by Rachel Whiteread was a cast of the inside of a house on Grove Rd
28	The East London Mosque
29	Clock tower from in front of The People’s Palace
30	The Royal London Hospital
31	Guernica by Pablo Picasso was displayed at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1939
32	The Whitechapel Art Gallery
33	Blooms, famous kosher restaurant on Whitechapel Rd
34	The Whitechapel Church Bell Foundry
35	Trinity Almshouses, Mile End Rd
36	The first V1 flying bomb or Doodlebug fell in Whitechapel in 1944

Mychael Barratt at his studio in Bermondsey

Arnold Circus and the Breathless Brass Band, oil painting

Sweet Thames, print  (Please click to enlarge)

A London Map of Days, print (Please click to enlarge)

Images copyright © Mychael Barratt

Mychael Barratt‘s Solo Show opens tonight Thursday 10th September from 6-9pm at For Arts Sake, 45 Bond St, W5 5AS, and runs until 11th October