Reclaimed Metal
If we live in a disposable society, then London-based Matt Small makes art from the least valued of all waste materials: old baked bean cans, abandoned car bonnets, discarded street signs. He re-purposes these unloved bits of scrap into something new and magical – striking art work of great skill and immense heart. His subjects are often people Matt describes as "young, dispossessed people, individuals who feel undervalued, who don’t have a voice, who get looked over." And, of course, there's a connection between his raw material and his subjects.
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Dexter
120 x 120cm Found Metal on Board
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Kaz
112 x 102 x 36cm, Found Metal on Board
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Reggie
120 x 120cm Found Metal on Board
Matt says: “That oven door, that shelving unit – they might be a pieces of trash to someone but I don’t see them like that. I see that they can be something beautiful and worthwhile. That’s how I see our young people too. Let’s look at their potential, at the hope that’s in all of them."
Matt was born in 1975, and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2000. He has shown at the Saatchi gallery and Black Rat Projects in the UK, but he has also found acclaim internationally. In Oregon, US, he created a mosaic of the athlete Jesse Owens from scrap metal for the 2021 World Athletics Championships. He’s now working on a similar public piece of Jamal Edwards for the entrepreneur’s London neighbourhood of Acton.
