Exhibitions
'Stories at the Seams': An Exhibition by Portal Project
Portal Project presents Stories at the Seams, an exhibition by 13 artists with lived experience of homelessness.
Stemming from the artists’ own journeys, the works in Stories at the Seams explore entanglements of lived experience and mythology. Spanning drawings, paintings and ceramics, they weave together folklore and memory, cityscapes and ancient deities, bodies and plant ecologies. The exhibition maps the artists’ personal and creative accounts of living between worlds. Here, at the junction of wildness and home, exclusion and belonging, where the known world begins to fray, thresholds emerge into the fantastical.
Exhibiting artists : Daiga, John, John J Sheehy, Johnny B, Lewis EM, L (el), Lui Saatchi, Mary Vallely, Matt R, Peter H, Pete C. , RICASO, Richard
Exhibition dates: 6 - 9 November 2025
Opening hours: Friday - Sunday, 12 - 6pm
Private view: Thursday 6 November, 5 - 8pm (all welcome)
Location: The Swiss Church in London, 79 Endell Street, London WC2H 9DY
Admission: Free (please RSVP so we can monitor capacity)
These artists find portals into inspiration where others might not look—in the arteries of the underground, the shadows beneath flyovers and in recollections of a night bus journey. Broken systems leave people living in the margins. Doorways, stations and buses become temporary sanctuaries, with many tracing invisible pathways through cities mapped differently. These are routines where resilience is not mere endurance, but survival through cycles and radical ability to change. Though shaped by hardship, such experiences can also open into deeper wisdoms.
Alongside individual artists’ works in the exhibition is a bronze Green Man plaque that has been collaboratively made by the Portal Project artists for Stories at the Seams. For centuries, the Green Man has reappeared across the world, symbolising the threshold between wildness and order. He is woven into aural and written tales, depicted in paintings and still carved into the architecture of sacred buildings in the city. Foliage spills from his mouth and ears, a reminder of cycles, endurance and renewal.
As a witness, the Green Man observes from the fringes of society. In our streets, where people rough sleep, he lingers still. Homelessness is not an individual failure but a collective forgetting that compassion is essential and that our walls are thin against the wilderness we all share. In Stories at the Seams, through art making as an act of defiance and an affirmation of life, the edges of these worlds become stitched together, revealing that our bond with the wild—and with each other—is closer than we imagine.
Further info:
Portal Project is a collaborative art collective working with people affected by homelessness. Through weekly workshops, we co-create public artworks, exhibitions and events that share their stories and perspectives.
The Big Issue, will present an accompanying Portal Project artwork in their 17 November 2025 magazine edition. Here, further stories, artworks and perspectives from the artists can be accessed through QR code ‘portals’.
The exhibition's Green Man plaque, created by Portal Project artists and Antropia CIC, will form part of a limited series of six public artworks to be installed across Camden. Each holds a QR code linking to an online resource list for people experiencing homelessness, offering information on shelters, food and shower access points, as well as health and legal support.
The artworks in this exhibition have been made during weekly workshops at partner venues the Swiss Church London and St. Paul's Church. They have also been made with support from partners the London Graphic Centre and Rochester Square.
Banner artwork 'clem' by Lewis EM
This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council England.
In partnership with Big Issue, Swiss Church, St.Pauls Church, London Graphic Centre, Rochester Square.
