Estate Portrait

Location

Country: UK
City: London
Place: Department for Levelling Up, Housing & Communities, 2 Marsham Street

This watercolour and ink drawing depicts Christopher Samuel on the South London council estate where he grew up with his mother. The two magpies reference the idiom ‘One for sorrow, two for joy’, as the artist came to terms with the progression of his life-changing health condition. Seeking to interrogate his personal understanding of identity as a disabled person impacted by inequality and marginalisation, Samuel responds with urgency, humour, and poetic subversiveness. This approach aims to make his work accessible to a wider audience, allowing others to identify and relate to a wider spectrum of human experience.

Christopher Samuel is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is rooted in identity and disability politics, often echoing the many facets of his own lived experience addressed with humour and poetic subversiveness. He graduated in Fine Art from De Montfort University Leicester, and has had solo exhibitions at BBC Leicester (2016) and Attenborough Art Centre (2018). He was commissioned by Unlimited for Art B&B, Blackpool (2019); and has had work included in the group show ‘Visions in the Nunnery’, Bow Arts, London (2020).

Places

Subjects

Materials & Techniques

paper (as artists material), watercolour (as artists materials), ink, drawing (Art object type)

Artist

Christopher Samuel (1979 - )

Title

Estate Portrait

Date

2018

Medium

watercolour and ink on paper

Dimensions

height: 25.0 cm; width: 35.5 cm

Acquisition

Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21

Provenance

The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 19 March 2021

GAC number

18920