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Decent exposure...
An art exhibition has turned the spotlight on people affected by homelessness and poverty, writes Sunita Rappai
TWO years ago, Jumah Yusuf found himself in a hostel in Hackney after a combination of events left him on the streets.
The young Somalian, now 26, is one of the stars of a new exhibition at the Novas Gallery in Camden Town featuring work by artists Tim Brown and Matthew Small.
He left behind a good life eight years ago to seek a new life in London – but fell in with the wrong crowd.
“Things did not work out,” he says. “I got involved with the wrong people.
“I was selling this and that, thinking I was going to make it. I was in a few fights and a couple of serious accidents. I almost lost my life.”
The hostel proved a turning point.
“I was used to living in nice places with my girlfriend, so it was a difficult environment,” he says. “But I learned a lot of things and I thought ‘here is an opportunity for me to turn my life around’.”
Today, Jumah is putting his knowledge to good use as a trainee project manager at Arlington House, a centre for the homeless in Camden Town. He is also the inspiration behind one of the most striking images in an exhibition inspired by the centre currently at the Novas Gallery.
Simply called Jumah, the 7ft by 4ft oil and acrylic painting by Small dominates the space. In person, Jumah, at 6ft 3ins, is almost as big as the image, which is painted on to old metal shelves found by Small in Arlington House.
Jumah decided to get involved with the project after meeting Matthew.
“He told me about the idea and I thought it was great,” he says. “It is for a good cause and I thought it was good for the kids. It is something they could get inspired by. It gives them hope, which is something they need.”
But even he was surprised by the quality of the end product.
“I was a bit shocked,” he says. “I knew they were good, but I did not expect this. I like the whole overview they have – the way they laid down the art on bits and pieces from Arlington House. Some of the materials they used are from the 1960s.
“Matthew does not say much, but you can look at his work and have your own thoughts on what is being said.” And what about his own portrait? “It’s good,” he says. “I can look at myself five years from now and see how I’ve changed. I had no idea when we started that it would be like this.”
It’s stunning estate of the art
UNDEREXPOSED
NOVAS GALLERY
TIM Brown and Matthew Small are both award-winning artists, but they approach art in two very different ways.
Brown is a photographer renowned for landscapes and cityscapes, while Small is a painter, whose name has become synonymous with painting bold and striking portraits on to bits of metal.
These unlikely collaborators prove that creative differences can be a driving force, as they produce a series of images depicting what it’s like to live on the other side of privilege in the urban environment.
As Brown explains: “I went to see an exhibition of Matthew’s about a year ago, and loved it.
“I called him up and we started experimenting, putting our images together digitally.
“Once we started to see how the two styles could fit together, we came up with the idea for this show”.
What makes this exhibition all the more appealing is that both artists have been inspired by Arlington House, a community centre for the homeless and immigrant communities living in and around Camden.
Currently undergoing major redevelopment, Brown and Small make use of concrete slabs, old cupboards, bricks and other materials that have come loose from the building, and we get a real sense of both the building and its inhabitants.
In Abbey Road Estate, Small paints on to an old cupboard, in thick, layered brushstrokes. Similarly, in Brown’s Nokia World, what looks like chip-board taken from the building-site provides the background for a haunting collage of mobile phones, screen-sized images of people’s heads, and pictures of hooded youths.
Ever since Small graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2000, he has pursued an almost exclusively urban agenda.
The very first painting you see on entering the gallery, Venus and Ipod, is Brown’s blown-up image of a flanked by images of a housing estate.
The effect is almost mesmerising – and is a prime example of how the two mediums of painting and photography can work together.
Brown and Small have included members of the community as far as possible.
The graffiti backdrops behind many of the paintings and photographs on display were created during workshops with local youth groups.
Elsewhere, in the upper gallery, a box room is dedicated to a series of pencil portraits Small has drawn of all his subjects, which they will be given at the end of the exhibition.
This is a triumph of an exhibition, showing how great art can be used in a socially inclusive way, celebrating the often unseen, always ‘Underexposed’ view of life on the margins of society.
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