Miixing his politics with his art

5:14pm Saturday 26th May 2007

A WALTHAMSTOW artist has been highly commended in the coveted Mercury Art Prize.

David Sullivan showed his winning piece, a painting of a Derbyshire miner's jazz band, at the Changing Room Gallery in Aveling Park, Forest Road, Walthamstow, last spring, for the 80th anniversary of the General Strike.

The painting was based on a fading black and white photograph of the band, taken in the summer of 1926.

The legendary dispute over wage cuts and working week increases for miners brought the country to a halt in May of that year.

In support of the miners, who were locked out of their pits at the beginning of that month when they refused to accept their employers' terms, dockers, railwaymen, transport workers, printers, steel workers and the majority of construction workers downed tools in a show of working class solidarity.

Although the Trades Union Congress called an end to the strike after nine days, during which the military were out on the streets and violent clashes between strikers and police took place, the miners stayed on strike for another nine months.

The outfit, called the Brannigan Jazz Band, was one of many established to raise money and keep the workers' spirits up.

Mr Sullivan, who is a Walthamstow Labour Party member, is currently studying for a Masters Degree in Painting at the Royal College Of Art.

He said he hoped his art would give people an insight into the spirit and political complexion of the time.

He added: "Although political art was banished to the margins after the 1970s, it is enjoying a real renaissance as people get bored with the vacuous content and celebrity fetishism of Brit Art."

You can view his work on Charles Saatchi's student website, Stuart - short for Student Art - at www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/-stuart and contact him on david.sullivan@rca. ac.uk.