Artists: Alaister, Daiga, John J Sheehy, Johnny B, Lewis EM, L (el), Lui Saatchi, Mary Vallely, Matt, Peter C. Norman, Peter H, Ricaso, Richard Fletcher

Stemming from the artists’ own journeys, the works in Stories at the Seams explore entanglements of lived experience and mythology. Spanning drawings, photographs, 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.

Find out more about Portal Project.

Broken systems leave people living in the margins. But, from the peripheries, 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. Doorways, stations and buses become temporary sanctuaries, with people tracing invisible pathways through cities mapped differently. These are routines where resilience is not mere endurance, but survival through cycles and a radical ability to change. Though shaped by hardship, such experiences can also open into deeper wisdoms.

Many of the artworks in Stories at the Seams explore the otherworldly. They create bridges from current circumstances into inner worlds of hope, play and nostalgia. Through worldbuilding as a meditative and grounding process, the artists invite the audience to step into their ways of perceiving the world.

Figures from the realm of fantasy and the borderlands of the seen world emerge in these visions. Animals, unicorns, and half-tree, half-human beings appear alongside people from the artists’ daily wanderings and encounters in the city. Moments of observation - shoppers in motion, commuters on the underground, breakdancers on Dalston Lane - appear in soft pastel sketches on the backs of beer boxes. Trains and buses recur as memories of constant movement along the city’s edges. These scenes trace the tangled web of human life, where kindness, chaos and tenderness coexist. Each work drifts between memory and imagination, quietly suggesting that transformation is always possible.

Ultimately, the artworks in Stories at the Seams remind us that myths hold both light and shadow. At the edges of the unbearable, art becomes an act of both defiance and repair. Each stroke on canvas or mark on paper becomes a movement against apathy and towards an affirmation of life. In stitching together worlds, the artworks reveal that our bond with the wild - and with each other - is closer than we imagine.

Further info

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.

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.

In the 17 November 2025 edition of the Big Issue magazine, Portal Project will present an artwork accompanying the Stories at the Seams exhibition. Here, further artworks and perspectives from the artists can be accessed through QR code ‘portals’.

This exhibition is supported by the Arts Council England.

In partnership with Big Issue, Swiss Church, St.Pauls Church, London Graphic Centre, Rochester Square.