Camberwell Nocturne 1984

This night-time view shows Habington House, a high-rise tower block built on Camberwell's Elmington Estate, in the early 1960s. The combination of the close-up view and the artificial lighting creates a striking image. This painting is part of a series which the artist evolved between 1983/4 and 1986/9 which blended tower blocks and medieval-style prisons. As a painter of London tower blocks for over twenty years, David Hepher wrote: 'I do not see them as prisons ... I cannot escape the irony of what they represent, but to me they can be curiously beautiful. Powerful and menacing, like the north face of the Eiger [a mountain in the Swiss Alps] by day; transformed, a mass of coloured lights against a velvet sky by night.'