Matt 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.