Mark Skipper’s ‘Faces of Rebellion’ exhibition now on at Cambridge’s The Edge cafe

Mark Skipper’s ‘Faces of Rebellion’, a month-long exhibition of his street portraits, is now on show at The Edge cafe on Mill Road.

The leading art-on-the-move expositor of impromptu rebellion set up his portable studio rig in 2022 as a way of getting out and directly engaging with members of the public in the aftermath of Covid-related lockdowns.

A member of Cambridge Urban Artists, Mark has gone on to refine his portraits, which include a sketch of the subject and their comments on climate breakdown. He got into doing portraits of climate campaigners because “as someone once said to me, anything you do will be stupid, but not to do anything is even stupider”.

The idea for the long-running series, now in its third year, started when Mark went to an exhibition of portraits of people in recovery from addiction.

“It was called ‘Faces of Recovery’,” Mark said at his speech to the audience at The Edge, which he called “a recovery cafe for people recovering from addiction”.

“When I saw the Faces of Recovery exhibition I said ‘ooh someone could do that for Extinction Rebellion’, and while I was thinking who that someone might be, I heard someone say ‘Yes, it could be Faces of Rebellion’ and I realised I had to do it even though I’d not had any portrait training.

“Then I met Alex and his wife Anna, who said ‘do him’ and we got together to discuss the trials and the challenges of how we’re moving into a climate crisis and there’s recurring themes through the series of love, compassion and community - community especially, that’s the most important.”

Alex is at the opening to offer support. He’s a big fan of the text - quotes by the subject about the impulse to protect the environment - next to the 50 sketches on display.

“You’ve made me sound fluent,” Alex Zeffert said to Mark next to the painting, which is dated 26 August 2022, “and I’m not, I’m garbled.

Another subject, Pushpanath Krishnamurthy - known as ‘Push’ - was also at the opening.

“It’s about how do we use art to communicate difficult issues like climate change,” said Push as he studied the drawings, “and this is one of the most powerful ways, and it’s evolving, there’s more artists and the stories have kept on going.”

Indeed, much to Mark’s delight, an artist called Solutuonairy in the Netherlands has picked up on the idea and is now doing something similar.

“She’s supercharged it,” he says of the project going international.

The Edge, a community interest company (CIC), is run day-to-day by Sarah Dickinson.

“We’re an independent social hub to help people in recovery from addiction,” Sarah says of the facility at the Brooklands Campus on Mill Road. “It’s run by 20 volunteers, with five or six paid staff.

“Every month we feature a new artist, last month it was Ian Rawlinson.”