Nik Cornwell’s artistic career began with his mother’s relentless request to “draw an elephant!” It was an ambitious assignment for a kid in mid-1970s South East London…a place where the local fauna featured plenty of pigeons but notably few trunk-bearing giants. Essentially, he was tasked with being a wildlife expert in a concrete jungle.

After surviving the elephant-drawing trials of his youth, Nik headed to Lewisham College before leveling up with a sculpture degree from Camberwell College of Arts. He eventually pulled a total full circle move, returning to Lewisham College to run the show as a tutor and course leader for several programs.

For the last decade, he has been in a committed relationship with the medium, obsessively tweaking his style and geeking out over materials. He’s been busy hoarding new techniques, living by the mantra that the learning curve is infinite.

​After years of perfecting the “is that a photograph?” aesthetic, Nik stumbled upon an old sketch of his featuring some particularly moody, harsh side-lighting. Looking back at it, he realized Hyper-Realism was getting a bit of a cold shoulder from the art world. Critics and casual viewers alike were getting “bored” with perfection, tossing around dismissive comments like, “What’s even the point?”

​Since he’d already stumbled upon a fix for this collective yawn, Nik decided to lean into it and develop a formal style. He officially dubbed it ‘Negative Hyper-Realism,’ effectively giving the technical middle finger to the “too-perfect-to-be-interesting” crowd.

​This exhibition serves up a timeline of Nik’s work from 1990 to 2025, handpicked by Damiyr Saleem. Damiyr’s trajectory went from sitting in Nik’s classroom at Lewisham College to becoming a talented curator, friend, and colleague. In a fitting tribute to their history, Nik only agreed to the show once he knew his former student was the one holding the curator’s clipboard.