Lots of people know Bradley Foxwell’s work without knowing his name. For many years he has been quietly putting paintings up around Hackney – the same streets he has lived on, homeless, for over a decade. Last month, his work hung together in a show of his own for the first time.
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly was Foxwell’s first solo exhibition. A chef before addiction and depression took his life apart, he began painting in rehab and never stopped.
His work is raw, funny and unflinching – a record of addiction and living on the streets. And it was all created outdoors in the places it depicts.
The exhibition borrows its title from the Sergio Leone Western and uses it as a structure for the show.
The Good gathers the people who matter: friends from the shelter who have since died, and the birth of his son. The Bad turns outward, to the City of London and the damage done to ordinary lives by its financial institutions. The Ugly turns inward, to how Foxwell sees himself.
He describes addiction as a movement through exactly this sequence: good people, corrupted, and ending up somewhere they never meant to go. Foxwell’s paintings are visceral and unsparing, but they are also very funny. He has an eye for irony and absurdity that the hardship never quite extinguishes, and the humour is what makes the darkness bearable to look at.
