AT first glance there is something very A-level art project about Elizabeth Peyton’s Whitechapel exhibition, Live Forever – the first major survey of the American painter’s work.

But look closer and beneath Peyton’s seemingly naive student approach, lie a series of touching and intimate pint-sized portraits that capture the artistic and cultural climate of the late 20th and early 21st Centuries.

Featuring a selection of 60 paintings, drawings and prints, Peyton’s subjects range from close friends (which provide some of her most powerful results), historical figures such as Napoleaon, to modern day musical icons, including Kurt Cobain, Jarvis Cocker and Liam Gallagher and contemporary artists.

While Peyton is now an established name in the art world, in the gallery space below, 12 emerging artists are on show for the triennial East End Academy exhibition. This year entitled The Painting Edition, the works on display were selected from more than 600 submissions by artists living or working in East London.

While the dozen artists all offer diverse and unique approaches, the show as a whole asks questions about what painting can be and how we can relate to it.

Take, for example, Guy Allott, whose surreal oil paintings confuse the eye by deliberately changing the landscape you would expect to see through a view-hole in a tree; or Daniel Kelly, who plays with the idea of 3D and space with his painted collage, which, we are told, took two days to install.

Finally, to complete the Whitechapel’s summer programme, The Third Dimension charts key developments in British sculpture since the 1960s, via work drawn from The British Council Collection.

Taking Anthony Caro as a starting point, whose rejection of the plinth and use of industrial material sparked a radical re-thinking of the medium, the eclectic selection includes Rachel Whiteread’s False Door; a young portrait of Gilbert & George playing on the duo’s view of themselves as ‘live sculptures’; a pair of glitter turntables offering a comment on the way communities form around music, courtesy of Jim Lambie and Gavin Turk’s infamous blue plaque.

Live Forever: Elizabeth Peyton runs until Sunday, September 20; East End Academy: The Painting Edition runs until Sunday, August 30 and British Council Collection: The Third Dimension runs until Sunday, September 20. Details: 020 7522 7888 or www.whitechapelgallery.org