“My work is usually very political, but here I wanted to step away — towards the freedom of the margins.”

Aidar Bekchintaev is a London-based multidisciplinary artist with a background in political science. His work - across drawing, painting, sculpture and digital media - examines power, control and the absurdity of authoritarian systems.

Marginalia turns from the centre to the edge. In medieval manuscripts, the margins were where the forbidden crept in: monks drew hybrid beasts, grotesques and obscene little scenes alongside the sacred text - the irrational and the violent escaping the authority of the main page. That tension is the artist's own subject. These works on paper, made in pencil, pastel, acrylic, pen - whatever the hand reached for - treat the off-hand and the unofficial as a method. Drawn at the edge of intention, they let a bestiary of the subconscious surface, where the comic and the menacing share the same line.

This is the latest exhibition by the artist, and his first in South London.

A free exhibition with proceeds from all sales going to the artist’s growth and funding public programmes in advancing and diversifying engagement in visual storytelling.

Opening times: West Norwood Picturehouse | West Norwood Cinema | Showtimes