National Portrait Gallery announces Road to 2012: Facing East

From Left: The Green Legacy - Daniel Townsend by Joe Bullock © Joe Bullock – National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 project; The Coffee Shop Experience – Jessica Collins by Lucas Seidenfaden © Lucas Seidenfaden – National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 project

The NPG in association with BT and the University of East London has today announced what promises to be an intriguing exhibition of 65 new photographs of East Londoners, documenting the impact of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on their communities. The exhibtion titled ROAD TO 2012: FACING EAST is to open at Four Corners, Bethnal Green on 9 August 2012 until 9 September 2012. Admission is free.

Press release:

ROAD TO 2012: FACING EAST
A London 2012 Festival Project
In partnership with BT and the University of East London
 
Four Corners, 121 Roman Road, Bethnal Green E2 0QN
9 August until 9 September 2012 Admission Free www.npg.org.uk/roadto2012
 
An exhibition of 65 new photographs of East Londoners that document the impact of the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games on their communities is to open at Four Corners, Bethnal Green on 9 August 2012.
 
Using a range of photographic styles and techniques, fine art and photography students from the University of East London have created Facing East, an exhibition resulting from a twelve-week project which focused on themes or groups of sitters in the build-up to London 2012. These include local Games volunteers, people working for the Green Legacy in the Lee Valley, commuters, swimming club members, coffee shop baristas, landlords renting out their rooms, locals on Hackney Marshes and allotment owners.
 
As well as curating and staging the exhibition under the guidance of National Portrait Gallery staff, the students developed their practice over a ten-week course of master classes and critique sessions led by internationally renowned photographers Anderson & Low, Jillian Edelstein, Brian Griffin, Emma Hardy, Nadav Kander and Bettina von Zwehl.
 
Over the last three years, these photographers have been commissioned by the National Portrait Gallery as part of the National Portrait Gallery/BT Road to 2012 Cultural Olympiad project. Their own work can be seen in Road to 2012: Aiming High at the National Portrait Gallery, London, until 23 September, as part of the London 2012 Festival.
 
Liz Smith, Director of Participation and Learning, National Portrait Gallery, London, says: ‘The National Portrait Gallery is delighted to have collaborated with students from the University of East London. Their documentary portraiture provides a thought-provoking insight into local communities during the build up to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games and adds texture and vibrancy to the overall Road to 2012 project.’
 
Professor Catherine Harper, Dean of the School of Arts & Digital Industries, University of East London, says:
‘This project has given the students a wonderful opportunity to explore contemporary photography and hone their professional skills through working alongside the truly inspirational Road to 2012 photographers.’
 
Sarah Dimmock, student, University of East London, says: ‘Being part of the Road to 2012 project has been a great privilege and I feel honoured to have met some of the worlds’ greatest photographers. It‘s been an unbelievable journey.’
 
Road to 2012: Facing East is part of the London 2012 Festival, the spectacular 12-week nationwide celebration running from 21 June until 9 September 2012 bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best from the UK.
 
The exhibition can be seen at Four Corners, an organisation committed to promoting artistic participation and inspiring work that wouldn’t otherwise happen. London’s centre for film and photography, it enables people to achieve their potential through their unique facilities.
 
EXHIBITION
Road to 2012: Facing East
Four Corners, 121 Roman Road E2 0QN
10.00-18.00 Mon-Sat, Admission Free
Tube: Bethnal Green
 
WEBSITE
www.npg.org.uk/roadto2012

Previously unseen portraits by John Swannell go on display at NPG

The National Portrait Gallery in London has announced a new display which will show previously unseen portraits by John Swannell. The display, Now and Then: Photographs by John Swannell, will run from 22 April until 31 December 2011 in Room 38a of the Gallery.

Press release:

PREVIOUSLY UNSEEN PORTRAITS OF SUSAN BOYLE AND TONY BLAIR TO GO DISPLAY AT NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY
 
Previously unreleased portraits of singer Susan Boyle, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and art historian and museum director Sir Roy Strong (in Elizabethan costume), will form part of a new display at the National Portrait Gallery. The display will highlight 16 portraits recently acquired for the Gallery’s Collection by acclaimed photographer John Swannell. The portraits on display range from previously unseen photographs taken in the last year, to portraits taken at the start of his career in the early 1970s. The display, Now and Then: Photographs by John Swannell, will run from 22 April until 31 December 2011 in Room 38a of the Gallery.
 
The photographs of Boyle and Blair are both unpublished images from Swannell’s photo shoots for their respective recent best-selling autobiographies. The portrait of Sir Roy Strong, art historian and former Director of the National Portrait Gallery, was a personal commission in which Strong is depicted in doublet and hose.
 
Known for his photographs of the Royal family, the display includes Swannell’s portrait of HRH The Princess Royal, commissioned for her 60th birthday. Spanning Swannell’s career since the 1970s, the display also includes portraits of musician Phil Lynott, co-founder and musician with Thin Lizzy, fashion icon Iman, singer George Michael, broadcaster Jeremy Paxman, actor Bill Nighy and film director Christopher Nolan. Swannell is particularly celebrated for his fashion photography, reflected in his portraits of Victoria Beckham, fashion designer Betty Jackson and actress Sienna Miller, modelling one of her sister’s designs for their jointly owned fashion label twenty8twelve.
 
Born in 1946, John Swannell left school at sixteen and first worked at Vogue Studios, assisting photographers such as Cecil Beaton. He worked for David Bailey from 1969 to 1973, including on Bailey’s book, Goodbye Baby and Amen (1969), before establishing his own studio. He spent the next 10 years travelling and working for magazines including Vogue, Harpers & Queen, The Sunday Times and Tatler. In 1993 Swannell was awarded a Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. His work was first exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in the group exhibition, Twenty for Today: New Portrait Photography (1985), and a solo exhibition of his work, Twenty Years On, was staged at the Gallery in 1997. The Gallery first began to acquire Swannell’s work in 1983, and now holds over 100 of his portraits covering the years 1970 to 2010. He has published numerous books, including Fine Lines (1982), Twenty Years On (1996), I’m still standing (2002) and Nudes 1978-2006 (2006). Swannell’s work is also held in collections at the V&A, the National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, and the Royal Photographic Society.

EVENTS
John Swannell will be giving a lecture at the Royal Geographical Society on 7 June at 7pm in aid of the National Autistic Society. This is a rare opportunity to see a personal collection of his work and hear of his travels and extraordinary career. Tickets £15
For further information please visit here.

For futher information about the NPG, please click here.

Susan Boyle, 2010 by John Swannell © John Swannell

Sir Roy Strong, 2010by John Swannell © John Swannell

Tony Blair, 2009 by John Swannell © John Swannell

National Portrait Gallery announce Only Connect

Press release

ONLY CONNECT
From 16 April to 27 November 2011
Room 33
Admission free
 
Only Connect is an unconventional new display at the National Portrait Gallery presenting a web of portraits connecting sitters across three centuries. Comprising paintings, sculpture, photographs, engravings, drawings, miniatures and works in other media from the National Portrait Gallery’s holdings, the display uses musical connections to explore new ways of looking at the Collection.
 
The display proposes a network of threads connecting singers, composers, artists, doctors, sculptors, poets, engineers, ambassadors and many others. As a result, everyone in the display is linked in one way or another. The connections range from the profound and the personal to the accidental and the incidental. Some were friends and some were lovers, several wrote about each other or had similar ideas, others were enemies or simply met on the street. For example, composer Benjamin Britten and violinist and conductor, Yehudi Menuhin performed at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp after liberation in 1945. Yehudi Menuhin gave ground-breaking performances of composer Michael Tippett’s Corelli Fantasia. The sets and costumes for Tippett’s opera Midsummer Marriage were designed by sculptor Barbara Hepworth. An alternative route is formed by writer George Bernard Shaw who corresponded with the pianist Harriet Cohen. She premiered Elgar’s Piano Quintet and Elgar made his most famous recording of his Violin Concerto with the teenaged Yehudi Menuhin. Such links evoke an invisible layer of human interconnectedness, a ‘six degrees of separation’ through the Collection of the National Portrait Gallery.
 
The choice of pictures reflects a ‘reading’ of the National Portrait Gallery Collection in the light of interaction and connectedness. Any sense of hierarchy, whether between creative or interpretative artists, musicians or great engineers has been avoided. This is reflected in the choice of works in the display, which purposefully presents mass-produced material such as engravings alongside masterworks. The title of the display, Only Connect, is taken from E M Forster’s novel, Howard’s End, which is concerned with the difficulties, troubles and benefits of relationships between members of different social classes. The display, Only Connect, presents one possible reading: it is open to the viewer to make other connections.
 
The display has been devised by Peter Sheppard Skærved in collaboration with Paul Moorhouse, 20th Century Curator at the National Portrait Gallery. Peter Sheppard Skærved is the dedicatee of over 200 works for solo violin, and has appeared as soloist in over thirty countries. One of very few people to perform on Paganini’s violin, il Cannone, Peter regularly performs in, and works with, museums worldwide.
 
Paul Moorhouse, 20th Century Curator says: ‘People rarely exist in isolation but are connected with each other. Only Connect offers a new way of looking at portraits by focusing on the connections – in this case musical connections – that link all the individuals featured in the display. It may look unusual at first, but we hope our visitors will enjoy this alternative way of thinking about portraiture.’
 
EVENTS
 
There will be a series of musical performances in response to the display:
 
•         13 May 2011 The Kreutzer Quartet respond to connections between Beethoven, Tippett and T.S. Eliot
•         3 June 2011 Peter Sheppard Skærved (Violin) and Julian Perkins (Harpsichord) perform works by Maria Cosway, Tartini, Corelli and Judith Bingham
•         1 July 2011 Peter Sheppard Skærved (Violin) and Aaron Shorr (Piano) play works by Bartok, Stravinsky, and Haflidi Hallgrimsson
•         9 September 2011 Peter Sheppard Skærved (Violin), performing pieces by Paganini, Joachim, and Michael Alec Ros
•         30 September 2011 Peter Sheppard Skærved (Violin) with students from the Royal Academy of Music, London, perform pieces by Mendelssohn, Britten and David Gorton
 
There will be two free tours of the display with Peter Sheppard Skærved in Room 33 on Tuesday 3 May 2011 at 15.00 and Thursday 19 May 2011 at 19.30. Further events will be announced shortly.
 
For further information on these events please click here.

Three Middlesex University students win place in Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize exhibition at NPG

The Solitude of Pygmalion (c) 2010, Steve Barrett

Untitlled (c) 2010, Bar Am-David

It doesn’t matter who you sleep with (c) 2010, Rokas Darulis

Middlesex University has seen three of its photography students win a place in this years prestigious Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize photography competition at the National Portrait Gallery, London.

 

Press release:

Three Middlesex University students in Taylor Wessing Prize Exhibition
Greek mythology, Israeli/Arab relations and homophobia the subjects tackled in the three powerful entries

Middlesex University photography students continue to excel with three winning a place in the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) as part of the prestigious Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize photography exhibition.The Taylor Wessing Prize brings together the best portrait photography each year in a three month exhibition at the central London gallery.  This year, more than 2,400 photographers  entered almost 6,000 images. Steve Barritt, Bar Am-David and Rokas Darulis were among just 60 whose work was chosen to appear in the gallery. 

Last year, Middlesex was represented by two students at the Taylor Wessing Prize, one of whom was Steve, originally from Cubert, near Newquay. This year he submitted an image which was part of his final MA degree project.  The project, a series of contemporary retellings of ancient Greek myths, saw Steve having to gain and lose weight, let his hair grow and even not wash for a week, as he made himself the central character in each shot. His chosen image was “The Solitude of Pygmalion”  based on the myth of the sculptor who fell in love with his sculpture.  It shows Steve sitting naked on a bed in an untidy room, with walls covered in posters and magazine articles on Britney Spears. He said: “I made a lot of effort putting on lots of weight and letting myself go, even resorting to not washing for weeks.  One of the later ones was a model and a footballer so I had to lose the weight again, it was tough. “For the Middlesex MA they give you a lot of space, you come up with a project idea and they support you as you bring it together.”

Bar Am-David flew to Jaffa in Israel for his final year project on his BA photography course.  The 25 year-old, who graduated from Middlesex’s BA Photography degree in July and is now based in Camden, will have his photo of an Israeli soldier exhibited at the NPG.  He said: “I’m originally from Israel and I have a special connection with the country.  Jaffa is the only place in the whole of Israel that Israeli people and Arab people live together in peace. “I’m extremely happy and really didn’t expect to get selected from so many photographers.”

Rokas Darulis graduated from the BA in photography last summer.  His photo is one of a series from his series challenging violent homophobia in his home country, Lithuania, and across Eastern Europe.  The project, “It doesn’t matter who you sleep with”,  is a series of portraits of two people of the same sex in bed. Rokas, 22, now living in Hackney, said: “Last year I sent a couple of images but didn’t get though.  I just promised myself to apply every year until I made it.  I was extremely excited when I found out. “Being at Middlesex helped me a lot, my final project was based on portraiture and this project is a similar style.”   

The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize runs at the National Portrait Gallery until 20 February 2011. Admission is £2, free for Gallery Supporters.

Winner of Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 announced

The winner of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 has been won by David Chancellor, 49, for his portrait, Huntress with Buck. The £12,000 ($20,000) award was announced at the National Portrait Gallery in London, England, last night.

Press Release
 
10 November 2010
 
PORTRAIT OF TEENAGE HUNTER WINS TOP PHOTO PRIZE
 
Winner of the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 announced at the National Portrait Gallery
 
The Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 has been won by David Chancellor, 49, for his portrait, Huntress with Buck, of 14 year old Josie Slaughter from Alabama on her first hunting trip to South Africa. He says: ‘Josie had hunted her buck earlier in the day and was returning to camp. As we arrived, the sun set below the cloud cover and I had almost unreal light for around a minute. The contrast between the peace and tranquillity of the location, plus Josie’s ethereal beauty and the dead buck, was what I wanted to explore. Here was a vulnerability and yet also a strength.’
 
The £12,000 award was presented to Chancellor at the National Portrait Gallery, London, last night (Tuesday 9 November). The portrait is from his project documenting hunters, the hunted and spaces associated with hunting. He says: ‘As a child I was fascinated by the tales of Colonel Jim Corbett hunting man-eating tigers in India. As an art student it was Peter Beard's seminal work The End of the Game that fascinated and inspired. This work will seek to explore the intricate and complex relationship between man and animals and how both struggle to adapt to their changing environments.’
 
Chancellor spent two days with the 14 year old and her family, shooting Kodak 160VC 120 film on a Mamiya 7 II camera. The painterly quality of light is a striking component of Chancellor’s winning entry. ‘I’ve always been interested in Africa; it’s impossible not to be inspired by the place,’ he says. ‘Once you are bitten by the continent you never recover. And for an artist or photographer, the light is indescribable.’ While Chancellor acknowledges that hunting is an emotive subject, he stresses the importance of remaining objective in his reportage. ‘The aim is always to be detached’, he says. ‘In reality that’s rarely possible, but I do hope I can observe without an agenda and without the necessity to shout.’

Born in Solihull in 1961, Chancellor inherited his interest in photography from his father, a keen amateur photographer, and started taking photographs of his boyhood passions: wildlife and motorsport. After an unfulfilling early career in banking, he studied photography at Kent Institute of Art and Design. Now based in both London and Cape Town, he shoots documentary reportage and portraiture for a range of clients, and regularly works on projects for Non-Governmental Organisations. Named Nikon Press Photographer of the Year three times, he also received a World Press Photo Award earlier this year, and a study of his wife and son was exhibited in last year’s Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize.

The following artists have also been commended in the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize 2010 and receive the following prizes:
£3,000 Second Prize: Panayiotis Lamprou for Portrait of my British wife from the series Human Presence

 

Born in Athens in 1975, Panayiotis Lamprou, was introduced to photography at the ‘Photography Circle’ in Athens in 1998, where he studied under Platon Rivellis.  He went on to study further at the Centro di Ricerca e Archiviazione della Fotografia in Spilimbergo, Italy.  His shortlisted portrait of his wife was not originally intended for public display, and was taken at the couple’s summerhouse on the small island of Schinousa in the Aegean Sea on a hot summer’s day. Lamprou says: ‘I never showed it to anyone. Only she knew about it. When she saw it she said that even if it wasn't a nude the photograph has the same power to express. I can describe the portrait as Independence and Love, Devotion and Freedom.’ His work has been included in numerous publications and sixteen exhibitions throughout Europe, and this will be the first time that his work has been on display in the UK.

2,000 Third Prize: Jeffrey Stockbridge for Tic Tac and Tootsie (twin sisters Carroll and Shelly McKean) from the series Nowhere but Here

Jeffrey Stockbridge, born 1982 in Woodbine, Maryland, moved to Philadelphia to study photography at Drexel University in 2002. Stockbridge’s shortlisted photograph is of Tic Tac and Tootsie, 20-year-old twin sisters Carroll and Shelly McKean taken in Kensington, North Philadelphia. The twin sisters, who live on the street and suffer from insomnia, are both addicted to Xanex and have resorted to prostitution to supply their habit. Stockbridge says: ‘Enduring unthinkable pain on a daily basis, the sisters are both incredibly strong and weak at the same time. Caught in the grip of their addiction, they do whatever it takes to survive, except for getting clean.’ Upon graduating in 2005, Stockbridge was placed as runner-up in the New York Times Magazine’s ‘Capture the Times’ photography competition for his series on abandoned houses in Philadelphia, titled Occupied. He has exhibited widely in the US since graduation, and received many grants and awards for his projects documenting urban blight in Philadelphia.
 
£1,000 Fourth Prize Abbie Trayler-Smith for Untitled 2 from the series Childhood Obesity

Born in South Wales in 1977, Abbie Trayler-Smith studied law at Kings College, London while taking photographs for the student newspaper. Self-trained, she went on to work as a photographer for The Daily Telegraph. Her shortlisted portrait was taken on the second meeting with a girl called Chelsea, from Shine, a group in Sheffield which helps teenagers deal with obesity. Trayler-Smith says: ‘Whilst talking about how it feels to live with the prejudices that come with being overweight, I looked away to change the film in my camera. When I looked back the picture was suddenly there. I shot one frame.’ Trayler-Smith has worked for Time Magazine, GEO, Marie Claire, Tatler, Guardian Weekend, Oxfam, UNICEF and BBC Worldwide among others. Her project on asylum seekers in the UK, Still Human, Still Here, was exhibited at HOST Gallery, London, in 2009 with an accompanying film which won both the Nikon Award 2009 and the PPY Best Multimedia Piece 2009. She joined Panos Pictures in 2007, and became a member of Panos Profile in 2010.

The ELLE COMMISSION
 
The winner of the ELLE Commission 2010 is Clare Shilland, 36, for her portrait Merel. Shilland will be given the opportunity to shoot a feature story for ELLE magazine. Now in its second year, the ELLE Commission was judged by the fashion magazine’s editor-in-chief, Lorraine Candy, together with the art director, Tom Meredith, and picture editor, Hannah Ridley.
 
Shilland, from South London, met Merel in Milan when she shot her for an Italian magazine and later asked her if she could photograph her for her exhibition Girls! Girls! Girls! She says: ‘The concept was that it would be a combination of female nudes and female drummers. I asked Merel if I could photograph her for it and she agreed. I travelled to Antwerp where she lives and we spent a few days there taking pictures. One day we rode bicycles out of the city to some woods and fields - that is where I took this picture.’

Shilland studied at Camberwell College of Arts and the Royal College of Art. She has shot for clients including Marni, Hardy Amies, Warner Music, Lyle & Scott and H&M, and her photographs have been published in i-D, Italian Rolling Stone, GQ Style and Teen Vogue amongst others.

This is the third year that the law firm, Taylor Wessing LLP, have sponsored the Prize.
 
The judges selected 60 portraits for the exhibition from nearly 6000 submissions entered by 2,401 photographers from around the world.
 
Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, says: ‘David Chancellor’s Huntress with Buck is a powerful and beautiful portrait; a worthy winner amidst a strong international submission.’
 
Tim Eyles, Managing Partner of international law firm Taylor Wessing says: 'As ever, Taylor Wessing is immensely proud to be associated with the Photographic Portrait Prize. Congratulations to all whose images feature in this year's exhibition and particularly to this year's winner David Chancellor.’
 
Lorraine Candy, Editor-in-Chief of ELLE magazine says: ‘Whether it’s new designers, models or photographers, discovering and supporting emerging talent is part of ELLE’s heritage. So it has been an honour for us to work with the National Portrait Gallery on this prestigious photography competition. Entries were strong but we decided on Claire Shilland’s portrait because of her evident ability to capture a striking scene with remarkable technical skill. The lighting captured is wonderful and is of the same calibre of photography that you would find in our magazine.’
 
EXHIBITION AND TOUR
The exhibition will run at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 11 November 2010 until 20 February 2011, admission £2, before touring to The Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens from 16 April until 26 June 2011.
 
PUBLICATION
A fully illustrated book including photographs from this year’s exhibition features an essay by Lucy Davies, (Photography Critic, The Telegraph, Picture Editor, Sunday Telegraph SEVEN Magazine, Editor Telephoto), and interviews with the prize winners by Richard McClure. Price £15. (Available from 11 November 2010)