Matt Small — also published as Matthew Small — is a British portrait painter born in London in 1975 and raised on estates in Chalk Farm and Gospel Oak. He took a first-class BA in Illustration at the University of Westminster before completing an MA at the Royal College of Art in 2000. In 2001 he won the Villiers David Art Prize and was shortlisted for the BP Portrait Award.
Rather than follow the route his training pointed to, Small turned to the street for both his subjects and his surfaces. He finds sitters by filming passers-by in London from a discreet distance, so the portrait captures a person as they actually are rather than as they would choose to be seen. He then paints them onto found metal and discarded household objects — a deliberate pairing. As he has put it, that oven door or shelving unit is trash to most people, but he sees what it could still be, and he sees young people the same way.
The result sits awkwardly inside art history's habits, which is the point. Portraiture has traditionally belonged to the rich, the famous and the commissioning classes. Small's subjects are young, frequently marginalised, and almost always anonymous — given the scale, colour and seriousness of attention that portraiture usually reserves for the powerful.
Exhibitions and public work
Small has exhibited at the Saatchi Gallery, Black Rat Projects, Lefevre Fine Art in Mayfair and Gallery Different in London, and internationally at Vroom & Varossieau in Amsterdam, Merry Karnowsky in Los Angeles and the Fort Wayne Museum of Art in Indiana.
This Is England — his portrait series of Gareth Southgate and the England men's squad, commissioned by the Football Association — was first exhibited as The World at Their Feet at the FA's St George's Park training ground. JG Contemporary handled the series and staged it at Pitzhanger Manor & Gallery in 2021, after which it was sold in its entirety to the Moniker Art Foundation in 2022. We have continued to exhibit the collection on the foundation's behalf, at Guildhall Art Gallery following the 2022 World Cup and at the National Football Museum in 2023.
His public work carries the same materials into permanent settings: a scrap-metal mosaic of Jesse Owens made for the 2021 World Athletics Championships in Oregon, and a portrait of Jamal Edwards MBE, built from recycled materials and installed in Acton in November 2021. West London Art Factory, now JG Contemporary commissioned and produced the Jamal Edwards work as part of the Acton Unframed project — securing the wall it stands on, siting it where local residents asked for it, and managing the installation.
Small's work has been written about in The Guardian, Aesthetica, ArtLyst and ArtDaily, and has appeared at auction at Bonhams New Bond Street. Alongside his studio practice he has run art workshops for young people and mounted exhibitions raising funds for homeless young Londoners.
Collecting Matt Small
Every work we sell is an original — there is one of each, and once it is gone it does not come back. Prices for available originals currently run from around £600 to £30,000 depending on scale and material. Works are sold with a certificate of authenticity and ship insured worldwide from London, with duties and taxes shown at checkout.
