'Atlantic', Coldharbour Lane.
This drawing shows customers in the Atlantic pub on the corner of Brixton's Atlantic Road and Coldharbour Lane. Mike Hawthorne based this work on an earlier drawing that he completed in 1980.
At that time, some Brixton residents regarded the Atlantic as a 'racist pub'. A former customer recalled 'the white man who owned the pub would break your glass after you had finished using it'. The Atlantic was one of the first buildings to be attacked during the Brixton riots in 1981.
A self-taught artist, Hawthorne has been drawing and painting since childhood. The first nine years of his life were spent in Nigeria and Sierra Leone.
