Gallery Summer Show: Portrait

7 Jul - 11 Aug 2023 Golden Square

Frith Street Gallery presents Portrait, an exhibition of works by gallery artists considering the contemporary portrait through a range of perspectives and mediums. From sensitive images of loved ones to reappropriated portraits mined from the past, Portrait speaks of our innate desire to understand and document our fellow human beings, whether real or imagined.

The exhibition is presented as part of 'Portrait Mode' – an international campaign celebrating portraiture on the occasion of the reopening of the National Portrait Gallery, London. Portrait is accompanied by an online moving-image programme, showcasing two works by gallery artists every fortnight for the duration of the exhibition, including work by Bridget Smith, Cornelia Parker, Fiona Tan, Daphne Wright and Raqs Media Collective. Click here to watch .
Daphne Wright, Sons, 2011
For the work Sons (2011) Daphne Wright made life casts of her children and then painted them using a traditional technique of plaster mixed with pigment. In this piece, time has been frozen and an image of the boys’ growing bodies preserved forever, caught in an awkward moment of their development as they emerge as individuals. Wright has described this in relation to loss, explaining: ‘You’re traveling in both directions and in each direction something is lost. By the time you cast an ear, the rest of the body has grown, and so on and so forth. It’s the expression of the loss of a child: they go on to be adults. You’re freezing the pain in both directions.’
Daphne Wright, Sad Little Faces, 2019
In much of Wright's work the artist explores how children are taught to recognise emotion through learnt facial expressions. This is continued by the current visual language of emojis. The Little Sad Faces (2019) are empathetic, delicate watercolours conveying the emotional labour required in reassurance.
Dayanita Singh, Mona and Myself, 2013
The intimacy of close relationships is explored too by Dayanita Singh, whose looping ‘moving still image’ work Mona and Myself (2013) depicts her dear late friend and muse Mona Ahmed. The work emerged by chance during a studio visit, while Mona lay on a couch, singing along to the song ‘Rasik Balma’ from the 1950s Hindi-language film Chori Chori. Singh describes the work as the outcome of trying to find ‘a true portrait of Mona’ – not video, not still photography but something else altogether.
‘Mona transformed me, not just my photography. She was the most unique person I had met in my life. She showed me how to think, to live, outside the box… She passed away in 2017.’
Cornelia Parker, Blue Shift, 2002
Drawing from popular culture, Cornelia Parker’s Blue Shift (2002) captures Mia Farrow at a key moment in the 1968 horror film, Rosemary’s Baby. It consists of a series of four polaroid images of the actor’s face at a pivotal moment in the film’s denouement.
Marlene Dumas, Phil, 2011
Marlene Dumas has also often turned her attention to celebrity culture, excavating our relationship with the media and what it tells us about the famous. Her portrait Phil (2011) depicts the late music producer and convicted murderer Phil Spector. Celebrated for his Wall of Sound, Spector gave us profoundly moving pop songs but very publicly fell from grace and died serving his prison sentence in 2021. During the trial process, much attention was paid to the series of wigs worn by Spector, and Dumas depicts him sporting one such wig here.
Tacita Dean, Found Postcard Monoprints (Actors), 2018
Both Tacita Dean and Fiona Tan adopt and transform archival materials. Found Postcard Monoprints (Actors) (2018) by Dean is a series of early twentieth-century postcards from the artist’s collection, featuring actors that range from unknown players to the stars of their day – Buster Keaton, Sarah Bernhardt and Rudolph Valentino among them. These images show the posturing of the actor, ready for public consumption, but now partially obscured, or perhaps embellished, by the monoprinting process.
Fiona Tan, Pickpockets, Léonie Césarine Bise, 2021
Fiona Tan’s Pickpockets is based upon rare and early police photographs of various petty criminals who had been arrested at the Exposition Universelle of 1889 in Paris. Tan was fascinated by these portraits and the unknown life stories of their subjects who hailed from internationally-diverse backgrounds. The individual piece shown here: Léonie Césarine Bise (2021), has had a spirited life story bestowed on her by the artist, a fiction written and voiced by art historian Sophie Berrebi.
'The rod holds a little card with a number I heard them call out: ‘Number 2’. That’s what I am to them: A young woman with matted hair, a number 2.'
Daniel Silver, Joe, 2023
For Daniel Silver, the history of painting, sculpture and psychoanalytic theory comes together in a new series of semi-abstract busts in unfired, oil-painted ceramic. With titles such as Mother or in this case Joe, the artist refers to people he has encountered or observed, creating elliptical portraits that form surreal imagined families.
Fiona Banner aka The Vanity Press, Mirror, 2007
Self-portraiture has long been a vehicle for formal experimentation and psychological exploration. In Fiona Banner’s Mirror (2007) the actor Samantha Morton is recorded in a performance in which she reads aloud – for the first time – a description of her nude self, written by Banner. The work came about through a life drawing session with the actor at Banner's studio, recorded only in text. Unprepared for what is on the page, Morton’s reading falters between dramatic virtuosity and deeply personal exposure. The result is a moving dissociative portrait / self-portrait exploring the boundaries of text and image.
Thomas Schütte, Anna, 2014
In Thomas Schütte’s Anna (2014) the oval frame suggests a mirror and, in turn, a self-portrait. This ceramic plaque comes from a series which have been created by the artist drawing directly into the unfired clay. The subject points to an extensive stock of drawings and watercolours that constitute a central field of work in Schütte’s oeuvre.
Anna Barriball, Mirror (Standing), 2023
Anna Barriball’s Mirror (standing) (2023) invites us obliquely to imagine a self-portrait. This life-size drawing has been made by placing paper against a full-length mirror, originally from her childhood home, that the artist has used since leaving for college as a teenager. Working steadily across the glass Barriball has replaced the reflective surface with pencil strokes. The viewer can almost make out their own reflection in the graphite surface creating a ghostly presence.
Polly Apfelbaum, Faces and Tails, 2021
Polly Apfelbaum is similarly engaged in the history of folk art and craft. The Barn Faces (2021) and drawing series Faces and Tails (2021) are inspired by circular Hex signs, developed from Fraktur, the elaborate illuminated folk art of the Pennsylvania German community, often found on the exterior of barns in her native Pennsylvania and serving a talismanic function. The faces appear to be half male, half female.
Moving Image Programme
Coinciding with the Gallery Summer Show, we are delighted to present an online programme of moving image works by gallery artists. Two works will be available to view online every fortnight for the duration of the exhibition and continuing into August. Click here to watch.

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