Big Issue sellers show their art

The creative endeavours of Big Issue vendors are being showcased for the first time at a gallery more used to exhibiting work by Brit Art stars such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin.

Paintings, sculptures, videos and photographs by more than 30 homeless and ex-homeless people are being shown in The Big Art Issue exhibition at Britart.com gallery in Commercial Street, Spitalfields. The exhibition will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the magazine.

Brought together in a 2,000 sq ft former warehouse, the show has colourful abstract and surreal paintings, comic book-style works, a multi-media installation, and visual poetry by Gerry De Burca, 56, who has been selling The Big Issue for a year.

Mr De Burca spent 11 years in Amsterdam running an art gallery. After selling The Big Issue in Whitechapel he joined a weekly writing class run by the Big Issue Foundation, the charity arm of the company.

He said: ?The Big Issue has helped me back again, I think it?s offered me a great chance. This is the first time I?ve had my work shown and I?m thrilled. I never got that kind of encouragement before. It pushed me into writing prose and into creativity again. I wanted to translate poems into a visual form.?

Curator Susan De Muth, who is a trustee of the Big Issue Foundation and runs an art gallery in south London, said: ?We have chosen a wide variety of work for this show reflecting the wide variety of people who end up on the streets.?

Prompted by increasing homelessness in London, Body Shop co-founder Gordon Roddick and magazine producer John Bird launched The Big Issue on 11 September 1991 with a circulation of 30,000 a week. Ten years later the magazine sells over 250,000 and claims more than a million readers. There are about 2,000 vendors nationwide with some 500 active at any one time in London.

Mr Bird said: ?We have always been very supportive of vendors? creativity. We believe that the creative force can change lives and this, coupled with our self-help philosophy, illustrates the ethos of the Big Issue movement.?

The exhibition runs from 13 to 18 September at The Britart showroom, 60-62 Commercial street, London E1 6LT(020 7392 7200). Open 11am-6pm.