Reclaiming childhood: face to face with child labour in India

Contemporary portrait painter Claire Phillips has created a new exhibition of paintings to provoke debate about the issues surrounding the use of child labour in India and in so doing demonstrates the relevance of portraiture to 21st century social issues. Claire has researched, interviewed, sketched and photographed children who have been rescued from factories, brick works, mining and embroidery works. This is a preview before launching at the Oxo Tower Gallery on the South Bank, London, later in July 2014. Be among the first to see Claire’s new work.
Claire is painting the children to show the very nature of the child – playful, mischievous, innocent and vulnerable. The children represented in these portraits are reclaiming their childhood from conditions that no adult should endure, let alone a child of 9 or 10 years old. The gentle nature of the portraits will be juxtaposed against the stories of their experience told from their own words

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