Visual Art
www.list.co.uk/visualart
‘WE ARE NATURALLY CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT OTHER PEOPLE LOOK LIKE’ Hitlist THE BEST EXHIBITIONS *
Michael Gaskell, ‘Tom’
✽✽ Colin Gray: In Sickness and in Health The photographer concludes his series The Parents, which chronicled the lives of his mum and dad, with this moving exhibition. See review, page 90. Street Level Photo Works, until Sat 23 Jan. ✽✽ The Flower and the Green Leaf The GSA showcases work from their archives and international collections to mark the centenary of the Mackintosh building. Glasgow School of Art, until Thu 23 Dec. ✽✽ The End of the Line: Attitudes in Drawing Eleven internationally renowned contemporary artists display works that exemplify the current renaissance in line drawing. Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until Sun 10 Jan. ✽✽ Siobhàn Hapaska: The Nose that Lost its Dog A trio of compelling sculptural works completed as part of Hapaska’s residency with the Glasgow Sculpture Studios. See review, page 90. Glasgow Sculpture Studios, until Sat 30 Jan. ✽✽ Karla Black: Sculptures Black’s impermanent sculptures, created out of everyday materials such as chalk dust, eye shadow and sugar paper, are much more than the sum of their parts. Inverleith House, Edinburgh, until Tue 9 Feb. ✽✽ Votive Group exhibition which brings together contemporary artists such as Abraham Cruzvillegas, Thea Djordjadze, and UK artists Torsten Lauschmann and Richard Wright. Reviewed next issue. CCA, Glasgow, Sat 5 Dec–Sat 30 Jan. ✽✽ BP Portrait Award 2009 The popular exhibition of works by shortlisted contemporary portrait painters returns to Edinburgh. See preview, left. Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 12 Dec–Sun 21 Feb. 3–17 Dec 2009 THE LIST 89
Face value
As the BP Portrait Award exhibition returns to Edinburgh, Rosalie Doubal explores why portraiture is returning to favour among contemporary artists
T he BP Portrait Award has proved one of the most popular exhibitions in the National Galleries’ calendar. In terms of the contemporary Scottish visual art scene, however, portraiture is rare. So what’s the attraction? Exhibiting personal portraits of family members alongside revealing works of celebrity sitters by both amateur and professional artists, this year’s selection represents a stylistically diverse collection of contemporary portrait paintings. Whittled down from one of the competition’s largest selection of entries, 56 portraits will be on show, including the three shortlisted artists, alongside the work of BP Travel Award 2008 winner Emmanouil Bitsakis.
‘People like looking at people. That’s why magazines like H e l l o and O K are popular, because we are naturally curious about what other people look like,’ says James Holloway, a judge of the award and director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. ‘Also, people can appreciate the skill in these portraits, whereas if it’s a landscape or a piece of conceptual art or installation, it’s much more difficult to really understand what the artist is trying to do.’
This year’s winning work, ‘Changeling 2’, by Peter Monkman, is an unsettling depiction of his daughter. Exploring the concept of the changeling – a child substituted for a fairy, troll or elf – Monkman draws on common notions of adolescence and change. Similarly, Michael Gaskell’s shortlisted work, ‘Tom’, a photo- realist painting that displays incredible skill, depicts a youngster on the cusp of manhood. ‘Adolescence is a very difficult period to paint, it is a time when people are developing characteristics, so it is
quite intriguing,’ Holloway explains. ‘I personally tend to go for what I would call “good quality painting”, that’s perhaps rather old fashioned, but Monkman’s work seemed to have that, and it had an edge as well.’ This year the competition was opened to international entries and the former maximum age limit of 40 was lifted. ‘A lot of people have entered from Russia, South Africa and Eastern Europe. And that’s really interesting because you do get different national characteristics coming in, for example there is this school of technically accomplished St Petersburg painters who work in a very traditional style.’
With this burgeoning interest in the award, there must be great ramifications for the genre and medium, for since the 1960s, figurative painting has occupied a rocky position in the Western art world. It was an intriguing decision, then, to include artist Gillian Wearing on the judging panel. The 1997 Turner Prize winner has time and again produced works that expand on the notion of portraiture. Exploring the disparities between personal and collective experience, Wearing has produced many photographic and video portraits that toy with traditionalist views of the medium.
‘Twenty years ago portraiture was “beyond the pale”,’ Holloway exclaims. ‘No serious artist would touch it – they thought it ghastly. Whereas now, lots of young artists are tackling it. They are interested in identity and therefore, portraiture. It’s much more acceptable in the more contemporary sphere.’
BP Portrait Award 2009, Dean Gallery, Edinburgh, Sat 12 Dec–Sun 21 Feb.