First solo exhibition of documentary photographs by Malaysian photographer Byron Mohammad Hamzah, about the lives of Malaysia's stateless youth.
Byron Mohammad Hamzah's first solo exhibition, The Flower & The Wall (or Bunga & Tembok), is showing at Lakeside Arts in the Angear Visitor Centre. It opened on 19 September and runs until 10 January, though it'll be closed for a bit from 3 to 13 November for Lustre. The exhibition is free, so you can just drop in whenever you're around University Park.
Hamzah is a Malaysian documentary photographer based in Malaysia and the UK, and this is his first solo show. He's self-taught and comes from a completely different world: he worked as a doctor for more than a decade before switching to photography. He went on to do a Masters in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at the University of the Arts, London, and graduated with distinction.
The work here grew out of his time volunteering as an art teacher for Malaysia's stateless youth, one of the country's most discriminated-against groups, denied basic rights like education and healthcare. He set out to document their lives, but the students began to take an active part in producing the images themselves. It's a project that's been recognised well beyond the local scene: it took third prize at the 2025 Taylor Wessing Photography Prize at the National Portrait Gallery and has been shortlisted for several international prizes.
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If you want to hear more about the work from the artist himself, there's a talk on Friday 20 November at 1pm, which costs £4.50 (free concessions). Lakeside Arts is the University of Nottingham's public arts centre and museum, set in the grounds of Highfields Park, so it's an easy enough spot to reach.
