Works
Overview

Whether celebrating a public figure, documenting a private moment or constructing an imagined persona, these works reveal portraiture as a continually evolving genre. Each image tells more than one story: that of the sitter, the artist and, ultimately, the viewer who completes it.

No other artistic genre is so immediately familiar, or so endlessly adaptable, as the portrait. Whilst it begins with an individual, it has the capacity to reveal character, shape our understanding of identity, tell stories and challenge the way we see one another. Bringing together photographs, editions and prints from our collection, A Portrait of You (and Me) explores the breadth of portraiture through the work of some of the most significant artists of the past fifty years.

 

The portrait can transform the familiar into something extraordinary. Chris Levine's luminous image of Kate Moss presents one of the world's most recognisable faces with an almost spiritual stillness. Elsewhere, Nan Goldin's James at Jean Colonna Fitting offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of her friends and collaborators, capturing the honesty and immediacy that define her work.

 

Portraiture can do more than record a likeness. It can engage with political realities, construct imagined worlds and question the nature of representation itself. In Unveiling #1, Shirin Neshat combines photography with handwritten Farsi text to explore questions of gender, faith and identity in post-revolutionary Iran. Gregory Crewdson and Miles Aldridge construct cinematic worlds that blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, whilst Cindy Sherman and Juno Calypso use performance and self-transformation to question identity and the roles we inhabit. Andy Warhol and John Baldessari extend this reinvention through the visual language of Pop and conceptual art, challenging how portraits are made, reproduced and understood.

 

Whether celebrating a public figure, documenting a private moment or constructing an imagined persona, these works reveal portraiture as a continually evolving genre. Each image tells more than one story: that of the sitter, the artist and, ultimately, the viewer who completes it.