Prince William ‘to challenge homeless stereotypes’ in new exhibition

A new art exhibition has opened at the Saatchi Gallery in partnership with the Prince of Wales’s project to end homelessness.
Installations, structures and paintings will be displayed at the London gallery on Chelsea’s King’s Road for the next six weeks.
The exhibition Homelessness: Reframed has been curated as a collaboration between the Prince’s Homewards programme, the gallery and the Eleven Eleven Foundation, which uses art as therapy.
A spokesman for Kensington Palace said that the prince “wanted to project new imagery around the topic of homelessness”.
He added that the exhibition was “the first of a number of major activations” which were designed to help “change the narrative and challenge negative perceptions and stereotypes around homelessness”.
William is leading a five-year project to make homelessness “rare, brief and unrepeated” with pilot projects across six UK locations: Aberdeen, Bournemouth’s Christchurch and Poole, Lambeth, Newport, Northern Ireland and Sheffield.
The idea is to shine a light not only on rough sleeping but cases of hidden homelessness around the country.
It features an installation called Home 2013 by David Tovey. It shows a large red house constructed out of car parts from a Peugeot 206, representing a time when the artist was homeless and living in his car.
Elsewhere, cardboard signs held up by homeless people to ask for help or money are framed on the wall. One reads: “Have 6.Y.O son, rent and bills. Will work if offered, any job. Any help needed and appreciated. Thank you!” Another says: “This is awkward for me too.”
One of the artists featured in the exhibition is Robi Walters, who was born to a mother who found herself pregnant and homeless at the age of 16. Walters suffered neglect as a child and was moved around through a series of children’s homes in Wandsworth before being placed with a foster family.
Before finding permanent accommodation, he accidentally started a fire that claimed the life of his brother, then aged three, after being left alone in a house as a five-year-old. He said that the trauma of losing his brother and, later, being forced to choose his foster parents over his mother as he stood before a judge in a court room left him “riddled with guilt”.
He has since gone on to receive international acclaim as an artist, working to create artwork and collages for celebrity collectors, including Thandie Newton, and is Aston Martin’s artist in residence.
He was photographed by Rankin for the new exhibition which also displays his own art work: two circles created from recycled plastic bottles and other materials. He said that his inspiration came from the desire to “take the things that people discard and make them beautiful so that people want them back, which is the story of my life”.
Lorna Tucker, a film-maker, was photographed by Rankin for the exhibition.
As a teenage runaway she slept rough on the streets of London at the age of 15 and became addicted to heroin. She has since made a documentary of her experience entitled Someone’s Daughter, Someone’s Son which features Colin Firth and Bryan Adams.
While collaborating with the prince’s royal foundation, she said: “I went in to meet these guys and I cried… to see that they had this incredible idea that was new and interesting.”
Next month, the prince is expected to visit the exhibition, which runs until September 20.