London exhibition explores untold history of how homelessness was criminalised

Homelessness in the UK is linked to early 1600s changes driven by land enclosures, economic shifts, and colonial expansion that altered how society treated unhoused people. A later turning point is the 19th-century Vagrancy Act, which criminalised rough sleeping in England and Wales and is currently being repealed. A London exhibition at the Museum of Homelessness, titled Criminal: The Untold History of Homelessness, presents this history through artists and activists. The show includes works by 10 Foot, Matt Bonner, and Gemma Lees, connecting homelessness with forced transportation from England, Ireland, and Africa. The museum frames the exhibition as a caution and resistance amid rising homelessness and far-right politics.

"Typically,the 19th-century Vagrancy Act, which criminalised rough sleeping in England and Wales and is currently being repealed, is seen as a turning point in history when unhoused people began to be penalised for their circumstances. However, researchers at the institution have looked back to the "Homelessness Big Bang" of the early 1600s as the beginning of homelessness-a period when land enclosures, economic shifts and early colonial expansion began to fundamentally change how society treated unhoused people."

"Staged in an English perennial meadow at the museum's site in Finsbury Park in north London, Criminal: The Untold History of Homelessness (until 25 July), brings together artists and activists including the anonymous graffiti artist known as 10 Foot and the designer Matt Bonner. Also featured is the poet and performance artist Gemma Lees, whose works explore the intertwined histories of people made homeless and transported from England, Ireland and Africa to the early plantations."

"The museum's director Matt Turtle says that the exhibition has particular resonance today given "the rise of the far right all over the world is being matched by increasing rates of homelessness". Far right politics, he says, typically leads to dangerous, and inaccurate rhetoric around unhoused people-a subject explore in a report by the Museum of Homelessness in 2022. He adds: "We have put this exhibition on as a cautionary taleand an act of resistance.""

"Turtle invited 10 Foot to create a new work for the exhibition-the artist's first sculpture-last autumn. The work, Fairie Newbuild, consists of a skip-shaped object constructed from palisade fencing, inside which is planted a hawthorn tree, a sacred symbol in Celtic mythology and European folklore said to mark the boundary between our"

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