Reclaiming Childhood
13 September until 24th January 2015
In the Art Gallery at Worthing Museum
Through portraits, sounds and stories, painter Claire Phillips gives a powerful insight into the lives of children who have had to sacrifice a portion of their life working in desperate conditions, for nothing in most cases.  Many of the children have been removed from their families by traffickers with undelivered promises of a better life and education.
These are not the stories of children from the UK but those of children who are just a few out of 50 million in India who are losing their childhood to unjustifiable conditions.
This exhibition presents some of their stories, their drawings and depicts their characters through the stunning portraits that Claire painted during, and after her work, with the children’s charity Bachpan Bachao Andolan, a charity dedicated to rescuing children from slavery.
Claire’s aim is 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 is juxtaposed against the stories of their experience told from their own words and soundtracks from the journey to meet them.’ Claire Philips
This striking and emotive exhibition will be challenging audiences in Worthing following its recent premier at the Oxo Gallery, London.