Group Show | Made in Brixton

© Katie Barlow

"Made in Brixton" features the work of seven Photofusion members; Mark Aitken, Katie Barlow, Carole Evans, Camille Mack, Chris Moyse, Nik Strangelove, and Alys Tomlinson. The seven projects that will hang together in Photofusion’s gallery celebrate, in one way or another, our community.

Coinciding with Refugee Week (June 19-25), "Made in Brixton" will showcase Katie Barlow’s photographs of refugees in Lesbos. Two of these images were included in this year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. This project has particular relevance in Lambeth as we are one of nine local authorities piloting the Full Community Sponsorship Programme which enables residents, community groups and businesses to directly sponsor a refugee family in the borough. Barlow’s experience in Lesbos prompted her to sign up for the scheme herself.

© Mark Aitken

Mark Aitken’s "Sanctum Ephemeral" is a series of stirring portraits of his neighbours, the residents of the embattled Cressingham Gardens Housing Estate in Brixton. The estate has been earmarked for demolition, and for five years the residents have been fighting to save their homes. Perhaps surprisingly, Aitken’s work does not focus on the politics of his and his neighbours’ situation but instead explores how we define our homes, and how our homes define us.

© Carole Evans

With this exhibition, Carole Evan’s revisits "Brixton People." This project began in January 2010 when Evans set up a pop-up studio in Brixton Market. Over the course of a week, Evans made 200 portraits of passers-by in the market. Seventy of the portraits were featured in a limited edition book (“Brixton People”). During this exhibition, Evans will return to Brixton Market with a pop-up studio to remake her portrait of Brixton.

© Camille Mack

Camille Mack’s body of work is a tribute to that great South London institution, the chicken shop. "Chicken Shop" is a series of portraits that explores the diverse makeup of South London’s chicken shop culture – their distinctive bright lights and low-cost meals draw everyone from art students, families and builders, to schoolkids, hipsters, and the drunken 3am rabble looking for something greasy after a night of drinking.

"Transience" is a series of colourful, abstract images created by Nik Strangelove. Strangelove photographs on the streets of Brixton, training his lens on surfaces that are in the process of transformation, deterioration, and defacement. The textures and colours which are unique to Brixton give these otherwise abstract images a real sense of place.

Chris Moyse’s images were made at the request of a teacher at The Learning Centre at The Charles Edward Brooke’s school in Myatts Fields (now closed). These images, all taken on the playground in less than 30 minutes, are powerful portraits of children whose lives were, in one way or another, in flux. These portraits were hung on the wall of the Learning Centre as a reward for their individual successes.

Alys Tomlinson’s project "The In-Between Years: Stories of London Teenagers" is comprised of three short films that challenge the often negative representations of London’s teenagers. The audiovisual pieces feature Grace, an urban horse-rider in Brixton as well as two boys devoted to fishing in Tottenham, and a female boxer in Camberwell.

These seven artists, all Photofusion members, have created work which engages with local, regional and international ideas whilst being distinctly "Made In Brixton."