Sheridan Russell Gallery

Matt Lambert works in oils on a variety of surfaces including canvas, board and even magazine covers. His inspiration comes from a range of sources – celebrity magazines, childhood memories, evolution, cultural symbols, belief systems, big cities, logos, superheroes and not least the developing world.

At the age of 23 he set up a charity – ‘Pass it on Africa’ inspired by his visit to the Nairobi slums in Kenya. Amongst other things, the charity holds a superheroes fun run every year in May to raise money for school projects in Africa. Runners participate dressed as their favourite superhero and some of the imagery from that event informs some of the works.

Matt is fascinated by how our hunter gatherer instincts play out against the modern consumer world and his work questions whether advertisers are manipulative masterminds, or simply people inevitably stuck in the same traps as their prey, providing messages that are congruent with our evolved human nature. His series of masks – particularly the wrestlers masks – question the vulnerability behind the accepted male (or indeed female) stereotypes.