Artwork people can taste wins highly competitive East London award

An Ode to All the Flavours (2024) by Laisul Hoque. Photograph: Rob Harris / courtesy Nunnery Gallery

For the next few weeks, you can sample the latest talent of East London’s art scene at the Nunnery Gallery’s East London Art Prize: Shortlist Exhibition 2025.

The prize, which this year attracted over 800 submissions by artists and collectives living or working within the ‘E’ postcode, was awarded to Laisul Hoque for An Ode to All the Flavours (2024). This artwork is actually one you can taste when you visit the gallery.

Resembling an antique sodium-lit “Bangladeshi sweet shop”, the installation was inspired by the artist’s earliest memory of his father sharing his favourite childhood snack.

The food available for visitors is freshly prepared and supplied daily by Oitij-jo Kitchen, an East London-based social enterprise working with local Bengali women.

Lydia Newman’s In the Wake of Ruin, She is Here (2024). Photograph: Rob Harris / courtesy Nunnery Gallery

On display also is a triptych, In the Wake of Ruin, She is Here (2024), by runner-up Lydia Newman. The large-scale painting is a phantasmagoric reflection on race, globalisation, class, and gender.

Ten other shortlisted entries are also included in the show. These include paintings, sculptures, films and installations by Darcey Fleming, dmstfctn, Eugene Macki, Fatima Ali, Gusty Ferro, Joseph Ijoyemi, Kuda Mushangi, Liang-Jung Chen, Mo Langmuir, and Yang Zou.

East London Art Prize: Shortlist Exhibition 2025 runs until 13 April at the Nunnery Gallery, Bow Arts Trust, 183 Bow Road, E3 2SJ.

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