If you are hungry it is difficult to think beyond the next meal.

And if you have no clean water and live among festering pollution and raw sewage, then it takes imagination and courage to free yourself to think about, for instance, creating art.

Yet art can be both an escape and a force for channelling protest, for making others aware of what you and your neighbours have to endure and for helping to bind a community together through shared identity and a common purpose.

Typical of those at the sharp end are the artists of the Wajukuu Project based in the Mukuru slum, near Nairobi’s Industrial Area.

There, pollutants are discharged into the Ngong River that runs through the slum, putting clean water at a premium and the residents’ health at risk.

Now paintings, prints and drawings by five artists from Wajukuu have been presented at the Kuona Trust Arts Centre, just a step or two from State House, Nairobi. The contrast and the irony are great, but purely coincidental.

In an exhibition curated by Danda Jaroljmek of Circle Art Gallery, all five are trying to improve their community.

But it is important to separate the worth of the drive underpinning this show from the intrinsic qualities of the artworks themselves. Should the critical bar be set lower because one instinctively wishes the artists well and hopes they will succeed? I think not, but keep my fingers crossed.

The Wajukuu project was started by the artist and incidental activist (or is it the other way around?) Shabu Mwangi, with a determination to better the lives of his neighbours through art, both as a reflection of their plight and as a tool for collective improvement.

The Maasai Mbili artists in Kibera and Michael Wafula’s Kijiji Project in Kayole are among others with similar objectives.

Mwangi with his incisive commentaries — on post-election violence, identity, refugees and mass migration — has created a visual lexicon that has projected him into the vanguard of East African artists now gaining international recognition. Currently on a residency with refugees in Berlin, he is a rapidly rising star.

Mwangi’s instantly recognisable style with his quirky figures — amorphous and at times half animal, half human — his shimmering palette and surprising compositions make him highly sought after and, inevitably, a figure whom others wish to emulate.

It is understandable but a temptation to resist. Mwangi’s work is so distinctive that anything even vaguely like it is seen to be riding on his shoulders — at best a poor pastiche.

The unhappy proof is in Sammy Mutinda’s Kuona offering Current Situation, which seems to be of a pregnant woman confronting a man who lies before her; a comment perhaps on the level of sex assaults were are told bedevil Mukuru.

Comparisons become inevitable. In Current Situation, Mutinda’s figures appear crudely drawn, the paintwork is rough and the composition awkward. His intentions and enthusiasm cannot be faulted; his execution can.

From his other painting Stranded, (stronger colouring, sharper definition and a more cohesive composition) it is clear however that Mutinda is developing skills sufficient to find his own path.

Another burgeoning talent is that of Joseph Waweru, who uses the structure and organisation of ants as a metaphor for life in the slum. His drawing is accurate — he clearly loves the velvet effect of charcoals and the delicacy that pastels can bring — and he alters scale to suggest menace. All ants are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Ngugi Waweru offers a group of vaguely Surrealist paintings featuring figures on mottled grounds. Their rough impasto represents artistic struggle, he says, while the large painted stitches in many of his compositions show the connections that heal and bind people together.

Then we have two artists who show us woodcuts, as boldly designed as the medium allows and heavily inked.

Both have developed expertise with the gouge plus a sense of composition and colour in a medium that without finesse can quickly become clumsy.

Lazarus Tumbati takes such traditional subjects as a mother and child, a pensive woman and a fish seller and imbues them with character and strength, while Paul Njoroge’s works are based on repeated images that on the one hand add vitality and rhythm but on the other verge towards wallpaper or fabric designs. He is walking a tightrope but hopefully has the skill to keep his balance.

It was Confucius or someone like him who said that when you are in a swamp with crocodiles biting your bum, the wider picture can wait.

Yet here we have five artists fighting to improve their community with developing skill sets and the determination to succeed.

This is their first exhibition and it is packed with promise. They must continue to lift their eyes from the swamp and find space for that wider picture.