Urban Legends

Not all young British artists mummify sharks, put their unmade beds on display or trot round the celebrity circuit. Some stay quietly in their studios, recording their surroundings in empty cityscapes haunted by their missing inhabitants, lit by streetlamps, early dawn or winter dusk.

Chris Campbell's specialty is car wrecks under a sodium glare. He finds most of his models in the streets around his studio in Walthamstow, in east London. In his "first grand car painting," the car lurks behind a billboard next to a busy road, light falling on the concrete pillars that frame this slice...