North London artist Mark Woods brings “Urban Portraits: Fragments of London” to Burgh House
North London-based artist Mark Woods will present Urban Portraits: Fragments of London at Burgh House, Hampstead, from 28 October to 15 November 2026.
The exhibition brings together 16 original paintings alongside a selection of limited-edition prints, reflecting Woods’ longstanding interest in architecture, memory and the changing face of London.
Originally from Bridgend in South Wales and a graduate of Central Saint Martins, Woods has lived in London for more than 30 years, spending most of that time in North London. Over the years, his paintings have increasingly focused on buildings and places that carry a strong sense of history, character and change.
“My paintings are places that mean something to me,” he says. “I’ve chosen buildings that I think are beautiful and wanted to keep a memory of the way they looked, because many of them were threatened with demolition or conversion into a new use.”
That desire to record places before they changed has taken him across London. In 2006, during the old Arsenal Stadium’s final season as a football ground, Woods drew and painted the Highbury stadium before returning later as the site was transformed into housing.
He also documented buildings around King’s Cross during the area’s transition from industrial landscape to the Granary Square and Coal Drops Yard development familiar today.
Further east, he was drawn to old Victorian warehouses and industrial buildings in Wapping, Limehouse and Rotherhithe, many of them captured before restoration and conversion into expensive riverside homes.
“I wanted to remember the buildings they were, and as I liked them,” Woods says. “My paintings try to show the beauty in the stains and scars and flaking paint.”
It is this sense of imperfection and accumulated history that gives much of the work in Urban Portraits its character. Rather than treating a building simply as an architectural subject, Woods often approaches it almost as he might a portrait, looking for the marks of age, use and change that make one place distinct from another.
The exhibition also includes residential buildings in Islington and Waterloo East, alongside the warehouses and industrial subjects that have long interested him.
The collection has developed gradually rather than being conceived all at once.
“This group of paintings has been taking shape for quite some time,” Woods says. “I’ve always been interested in capturing the old for posterity and memory, and London is a brilliant city for this. Every area goes through change, some more than others.”
He points to places such as the South Bank, Battersea Power Station, Tate Modern and Lots Road as examples of the way London continually reinvents itself.
“My paintings have come together as the city has changed and I’ve travelled to capture that change,” he says.
That idea of change, and what is lost when familiar places disappear, sits at the heart of the exhibition.
“I hope people like the paintings and that it starts conversations they may have themselves about buildings they like, or places they remember, but have changed,” Woods says.
“I hope it allows people to look at their own areas and see the buildings in a different light. Old buildings aren’t always saved and restored. Some are forgotten about and slowly fade from memory, until they are knocked down and you can’t remember what was there.”
For Woods, Burgh House felt like a natural setting for this body of work.
“I chose Burgh House because it is a beautiful building, with a fabulous café and garden,” he says. “It hosts art exhibitions in its Peggy Jay Gallery and it’s a brilliant venue.”
The historic Hampstead setting also feels particularly fitting for an exhibition concerned with place, memory and the way buildings accumulate meaning over time.
Urban Portraits: Fragments of London runs at Burgh House, New End Square, Hampstead, London NW3, from 28 October to 15 November 2026.
Admission is free. Further information and opening times:
https://www.burghhouse.org.uk/whats-on/whats-on/exhibition/urban-portraits-fragments-of-london
