Mark Siebert’s Losers paintings are tinged with sadness and sweetness. Like dirty pastel poems from the streets these paintings are little hymns to hope, excitement, loss and instant gratification turned sour. Their colour, their lettering, reflect the promise of the tiny event (of consumption, of living) that each one represented briefly: the record of an impulse triggered.

The imagery and materials for the paintings come from London streets, with images of betting stubs, scratch cards and lottery tickets collected with the artist’s phone camera while he goes about his daily business. On these same footpaths and roadsides the artist gathers discarded packaging, card and wood for the captured images to be painted on.

Reflecting on the work, the artist has taken several of the completed Losers back to the streets as a part of the Losers Walking Tour. Over 4 days around Homerton, London visitors to the exhibition were sent off with a map of the locations to view the paintings in the places that the images and supports came from.

Siebert is not precious with the Losers paintings; their nature reflects the materials and images he works with. The paintings are fixed to the wall through the face with discarded screws, there is a questionable longevity (they will age as the acids from the supports effects the paint), there is little care as to whether the edges are straight or square and when the work is installed the paintings are butted up next to each other with each installation different to the last. This is not neglect; it is the artist treating the artwork as a whole, letting the subject matter influence installation and materials.

Losers records London. Each painting is titled after the place the images were found and the artist often includes a map with the locations of exhibited paintings pinned to it. The tickets don’t record any single life, though they might be taken to record life.

Image List: A Group of Losers, installed at the Florence Trust during a residency exhibition in 2014, Losers (Homerton High Street 3) (Appeared in the finalists John Moores Painting Prize at the Walker Arts Centre, Liverpool, UK), Losers (Cambridge Heath Road 4), Losers (Broadway Market 2), Losers (Bermondsey Street 3), Losers (Bus Shelter Cambridge Heath Road), A Group of Losers, installed in the Plus Arts Projects exhibition at the Mayor’s Parlour in 2012, Bow, London, A Group of Losers, installed in the Losers solo exhibition at Gag Projects in 2013, Adelaide, Australia, Works installed in the Losers Walking Tour 2014 around Homerton, London as part of the Artlicks Weekend Festival with people on the tour.