Nine artists from refugee camps are the stars of an exhibition devoted to the plight of migrants, taking in care and concern for the oppressed, enslaved and exploited of this world.

Called Of Ships Passing in the Night, it follows a workshop at the Dust Depot arts centre at the Nairobi Railways Museum, run by the painter Patrick Mukabi.

Adding heft to the show are such emerging talents of the Kenyan arts scene as Longinos Nagila and Onyis Martin, with the whole deal sealed by a handful of established painters including Kivuthi Mbuno, Shabu Mwangi and Michael Soi.

The exhibition was developed by the artists Peterson Kamwathi and Thom Ogonga, who chose the works to show and put the whole thing into context.

Good art should be of its time, yet offer a timeless perspective, but even Kamwathi and Ogonga must have been astonished by the coincidence that made the timing of this show so topical and even more incisive.

It came at the very moment Kenya announced it would close two of the biggest refugee camps in the world — Dadaab, on its border with Somalia, and Kakuma in Turkana, together leaving 550,000 or more people short of somewhere to live.

It was a decision met with howls of protest (and why do protests always howl, rather than bark or cough?)

Yet it was ahead of the curve because only days later David Miliband, the former British Foreign Secretary who now heads the International Rescue Committee, demanded the closure of all camps, everywhere, and the assimilation of refugees and IDPs into mainstream society.

Wonderfully, International Rescue is also the name of the group in the 1960s puppet show Thunderbirds, featuring jerky figures and the enchanting Lady Penelope and her devoted butler Parker.

Mr Miliband does indeed look somewhat wooden at times, even a little jerky on camera, but his committee is simply an example of life imitating art; an umbrella for humanitarian relief worldwide.

So, great timing — and Of Ships Passing in the Night is rather a good show.

The first part of it is in the Goethe Institut, off Loita Street, Nairobi, where 21 paintings line the walls. Congolese from the camps, including the fabulously naïve Alpha Mukange Mukangala (one picture is signed Alpha the Best) have produced paintings that are more polemic than art, although, to be kinder, one could also say they fairly represent the art of polemic.

I liked the painting by Noor Ali Mudey, a Somali who has painted a tropical beach strewn with the bodies of drowned migrants next to their wrecked rowing boat.

Off shore are two white ships; either cruise liners standing for the other half of this world, or warships patrolling to prevent people smugglers causing more deaths.

Nagila and Martin focus on passport stamps and razor wire, while Kivuthi Mbuno’s two crayon drawings are typical of his fantasy scenes of Akamba village life.

They are, however, of a time when borders were simply streams, or a range of hills; no guard posts, no wire, no passport stamps needed.

Soi, joyfully living down to expectations, scorns the political correctness of NGOs and provides a witty counterpoint with paintings that cut straight to the unfortunate reality offered recently by a few disgraced UN workers who offered succour in return for sex.

Spanish Visa, German Visa and French Visa show African men and women draped around white men and women who are their means of escape.

I particularly liked German Visa, which has a lissome black girl clutching an enormous balding and bearded white man. He has a beer belly and a drooping pipe. No sign of a sausage, thank God.

The second part of the exhibition (until May 27) is around the corner in Monrovia Street at the Alliance Francaise where downstairs paintings include a huge monochrome study of migrants by Mukabi, while the first floor is given over to photographs of camps and shelters under various headings such as Screening Process, Life in the Camps, and Treatment of Refugees.

The photographs were provided by France, Germany and Kenya as part of the project Artists for Refugees co-ordinated by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which organised both workshop and exhibitions.

My visit to the Alliance was on exam day and therefore brief.

To the candidates being tested on their French, and to migrants, refugees, and those being exploited everywhere, I can only wish Bonne chance!