Major Plymouth retrospective reframes Beryl Cook as a serious chronicler of social change

A major retrospective of Beryl Cook’s work opens at the Box in Plymouth on 24 January 2026 and aims to show she was a serious, significant artist who skilfully chronicled a period of social transformation. Curator Terah Walkup said the Pride and Joy show is “absolutely a moment for Beryl Cook” and described the venue as “awash with colour”.

The exhibition coincides with the centenary of Cook’s birth and the half century since a Sunday Times feature brought her public attention after her first exhibition at an arts centre in Plymouth. Cook, who moved to Plymouth in 1968 and died in 2008 aged 81, made the city’s pubs, streets and lido vivid backdrops for her work.

The show features more than 80 paintings alongside rarely seen sculptures, textiles and Cook’s personal archive of photographs, sketches and correspondence. An “identity and representation” section highlights how she painted those who were “othered”. Walkup pointed to a 1972 painting called Bar Girls and said: “She’s not making fun of her subjects at all – she’s painting people occupying spaces unapologetically.

She celebrates her subjects and we think there’s something so important and radical and joyous in that.” The exhibition’s “process and practice” and “influences and impact” sections show Cook mining local media and drawing on sources from seaside postcards to Modigliani and Pieter Bruegel the Elder.

Key Topics

Culture, Beryl Cook, The Box, Plymouth, Terah Walkup, Bar Girls