3rd – 15th June 2005
Private View: Thursday 2nd June 6:30 – 8:30
Click here to see the exhibition online

Sesame presents an exhibition of new paintings by
Matthew Small.

Matthew Small has a thoroughly unique approach to portrait painting. Far from focusing on a sitter of importance or glamour, Small takes his subjects direct from the streets around his native Kentish Town. Wandering the city with a video camera, he captures the anonymous faces of urban youth, disaffected and defiant.

The materials he uses are also found from his surroundings. He paints onto discarded sheet metal: combi-boiler covers, filing cabinets, even a discarded Ikea cabinet has been disassembled and used to create a series of faces from a nearby estate.

Many of his paints are also gathered locally, such as household gloss or poster paints, applied in a unique way that resembles the surfaces of billboards long built up and torn away over the years, then varnished over to preserve their organic quality. In this way, by every element of the paintings being found objects (subject, material and image), Small portrays people as truly products of their environment.

The New Paintings show also features the first exhibition of Matthew Small’s treatment of new subject matter, applying his unique technique to painting cityscapes, in particular the estates where his characters are found. Maintaining the tone of hard urbanism and continuing the interplay of monochrome and colour, he injects his cityscapes with the same mixture of unrelenting alienation and a defiant, at times tragic life-view that characterises his portrait work.

From this combination of works, the show provides a deep insight into urban life in North London and its characters, as seen by an uncompromising realist painter of unique talent.