The Box: Pride and Joy and more, Beryl Cook

This exhibition runs until the 31st May 2026

It's a lovely exhibition in a beautiful location.  I got exactly what I expected from a collection of Beryl's work, a sense of warmth and humour, acceptance.  St Luke's is an old church across Tavistock Place from the main building of the Box.  Inside, the ground floor has been partitioned in places to break up the space and give more hanging area.  It had been divide up into several areas through the centre and both sides, with the side areas underneath the gallery.  At the far end of the room is a glorious stained glass window.

You need to book a ticket to this exhibition, but they are free.  You need to arrive during the hour you have booked but may need to queue as they admit up to a maximum number.  Additional people may only be let in as others leave.  The exhibition has been incredibly popular and visitor numbers at the Box have been much higher than normal and has already beaten its target visitor number for the year.  While 55% of the visitors have Plymouth postcodes, the remaining 45% have travelled from around the country.

This is an amazing tribute to Beryl Cook's work as her work has faded from popular view in recent years as she passed away in 2008.  People have obviously never forgotten the fondness they held for her pieces, but it was not only people of my age and older at the exhibition, even if they were the majority.

I think one thing I really missed when I was young seeing her paintings, was just how socially progressive she was, how accepting.  She portrayed people in a very human way, she didn't poke fun but she found humour.  This is a tricky thing and shows such a warmth of character in Beryl.  She als painted women in a way that was really appreciated at the time, although the women in her pictures may be sexual, they were not sexualised.  There is a huge fine line there.  These women were being strong and beautiful for themselves, in a way that maybe society wouldn't accept in their voluptuous bodies and oversized hands.  So often, women in art are made beautiful for the gaze of others, sexualized.

So to, the LGBTQ+ community was underground at the time and not generally accessible at the time.  She painted these communities in a way that accepted them but also made them acceptable.  Her paintings did not shock.  I don't remember ever seeing a painting of hers and feeling shock and horror.

If you have only ever seen her paintings in magazines and books, it would be easy to see her pictures as not being painterly, as being simplistic.  Getting up close to them, it so much more obvious the detail and care, the sophistication of her technique.  Her painting of hair, of plants, was very skilled.

The art critics never truly accepted her as an artist and as an introvert, her belief in her skill was often affected.  She formed friendships with other artists and received many letters from appreciative fans and these things all helped.  I guess maybe it was a little snobbishness on their part?  She had no formal training and was a middle aged housewife (except she wasn't, she was an artist).  She painted city life in Plymouth, not the fancy and cool but the everyday and not the high brow or rich.  Her joy and humour are perhaps not what art critics looking for the high brow and elevated, or the tortured angst of artistic genius, might consider art.  I think Beryl showed a different way and as her popularity endures, so her legacy should continue to be celebrated and her place in art history cemented.

There were images I was familiar with and others I had not seen before.  I enjoyed seeing her tools, her preliminary sketch and gaining an insight in to her process.  I enjoyed learning about the artists she admired, such as Edward Burra.  It was lovely to see other things she created, beyond her paintings.  There were many joyous moments as I walked round, many moments of humour.

But...  I also found the exhibition challenging.  If you are someone who finds it difficult to move and feel comfortable in large groups of people, be prepared.  It is likely that you will find the exhibition very busy, though, obviously, not dangerously overcrowded.  I didn't work my way round the exhibition in any logical way.  I would find a knot of people viewing the next few paintings but see that there was space to view other paintings I had not looked at.  I had to remember which parts of the exhibition to go back to.  I was often reading around people, or stood behind them.  I found myself being bumped in to a few times.  Being the way I am, this increased my stress level.  Noise was not an issue for me at the exhibition.  

Some of the pieces had QR codes on their information, but I did not realise towards the end.  I would not have had time to stand there and follow these links, I would have been in the way.  I doubt anyone had the time and space.  I doubt many people felt able to truly linger, or maybe that's just me.  I think they are possibly links to the same audio clips on the Bloomberg Arts app for the exhibition.

So, it was just as amazing as I expected to see Beryl Cook's art collected together like this and displayed.  I am grateful for the opportunity and think it is amazing that so many have wanted to and been able to share this experience.  It's been great for Plymouth.  It's not my preferred feel for an exhibition though.  I actually would rather pay to access a quieter session for such a special exhibition I think.  Certainly, I would not have coped with that level of interaction for a much larger exhibition.

It was good to see other Beryl Cook related exhibits in the main Box building.  In the Active Archives they had a Dear Beryl display with a number of display cases showing a mixture of items, including things she owned, letters she had received or written, sketches, paintings and merchandise.  It was interesting and well put together.  

They also had the Dear Beryl documentary playing at one end of the room.  I had watched the majority of this documentary earlier in the year, while Peep Show was on display.  It's delightful and I can see why people would want to watch it.  The difficulty was, a lot of people wanted to watch it now.  I went through I think four times, as I went from the lift to the Journeys with Mai exhibition before and after visiting Pride and Joy.  Perhaps the popularity of the film had taken the Box by surprise but it certainly made it hard to walk through.  

Also on display was a display case showing maquettes of the sculptures placed round Plymouth of some of the people in Beryl's paintings.  These are small, uncoloured sculptures used to work out shape and form.  It was really nice to see them but I was lucky I found them!  They are placed in the entrance hall at the bottom of a set of stairs that leads to the entrance in the old part of the building.  This is on the opposite side of the building to Tavistock Place, the other side of the cafe to the main modern entrance. 

There was also a lovely display in a window display in the cafe by the Craft Collective, a knitting group that meets at the Box.  They had knitted Beryl Cook inspired items as well as embellishing an enlarged Beryl Cook painting (Window Dresser 2) that had been embellished with knitted items.  This was a joyful exhibit, with a seagull hat, a collection of sailors and flowery embellished items.  The picture had been embellished with a flower border, flowers on some of the clothing, hair, a scarf and so on.  I think Beryl would have enjoyed it very much.   It was lovely and colourful, full of joy.  Just like Beryl...