Exhibition Concept statement:

🎨 In Your Face

my friends and other activists

In Your Face is a portrait series about presence, defiance, and compassion.

It brings together people whose faces, sometimes famous, sometimes activist friends of the artist, embody what it means to care actively and loudly.

From the globally recognised to those working tirelessly on the front lines of change, these works explore the many faces of courage and conscience. Some are “in your face” as public figures, yet their activism is hidden in plain sight. Others are “in your face” through protest, direct action, and the daily labour of refusing injustice, insisting again and again, that another world is possible.

The phrase plays with contradiction: the literal intensity of my painting style: Expressive, close-cropped faces that confront the viewer, alongside more elusive works where the image almost disappears into shadow. Activism, too, moves between visibility and silence, confrontation and grace. To be “in your face” is sometimes to shout in the streets, sometimes to stand one’s ground when it would be easier to turn away, but always challenging systems of oppression.

Exhibited at The Blockwork Gallery , a grassroots community art space on an estate facing demolition, these portraits become part of a living act of resistance.

They speak not only of those portrayed, but of all who refuse to vanish quietly.

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(Portraits in pictures are previous work. The exhibition proposal is for December @ #blockworkgallery #clockworkgallery #2140

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