November 13, 2025 |
For Toby Grant, streets and shop windows are all he needs to make great art. Going by Cato within the art world, Grant, who was born in Brighton and now lives in Peckham, presents larger-than-life scenes (literally, big hands and big heads are a Cato signature) of the Black communities who reside in the South London district. These are the subjects that form the basis of Grant’s biggest solo exhibition at Saatchi Yates, open to the public from today. Barbershops, diners, living rooms and other private spaces, where residents have coalesced for years, become the backdrops of Grant’s layered paintings, where each element is painted onto unstretched canvas before being cut out and pasted onto wall-filling pieces that possess a scrapbook-like quality. “I’ve always made my private spaces, my bedroom [for example], into my own world, [it’s] where I can dream things up,” Grant says. “[It’s also] where people can express themselves without being seen.”
Despite its grand scale, Grant’s work still feels intimate. The bloated proportions, loud colours and jagged edges of pasted canvas make the pieces more eye-catching than most, but it’s the faces that really hold your attention. Painting from images ripped from old photography books or people he and friends have streetcast, every person depicted in a Cato piece is unique. “I’m looking for people with a story in their face,” he says of selecting his subjects. “I grew up always talking to people on the street, and you get some good stories that way. I’m looking for people I can relate to, and who’ve got something mysterious [about them].”
Finding something he can relate to in his subjects is a recurring theme across Grant’s portfolio, most notably in his depiction of music. His scenes often have an instrument, or two, or three, with his subjects jamming out alone or with friends. An older piece, titled Jazz, is based directly on Grant and his friends all playing music together. Grant himself is a keen musician, playing guitar in his band Clayfoot, and is a big fan of legends like David Bowie and Stevie Wonder. “The relationship between music and art for me is that both come from the same place – being obsessed with other artists and wanting to do what they do”. When asked who his dream dinner guests, dead or alive, were, two of Grant’s answers were musicians – MF Doom and Sade. The last was Shakespeare.
This diverse dinner table is unsurprising when you look at the gamut of Grant’s influences. Photographer Malick Sidibé, who shot the dancefloors and hangouts in his native Mali in the 1960s, props up much of his photography research, whereas his composition of the body is inspired by American artist Romare Bearden, and his cubic, jagged style by Picasso. This eclectic mix is then blended in Grant’s whirring brain, and out pops these works that feel like they’re rooted in years of cultural history whilst still stuffed with modern flavour. Grant’s work seems to be constantly playing between two different things – the past and the present, the fantastical and the real. And it makes for work that feels fresh, exciting and leaves you wanting more.
Cato at Saatchi Yates is on now until January 5. Discover more here.
Photography courtesy of Saatchi Yates.
Cato
