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| You are in National Portrait Gallery | What's on? | BP Portrait Award | Commemorative book | |||||||||
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this publication online The BP Portrait Award, now in its twenty-fourth year, is a popular fixture on the summer calendar, and is the leading showcase for young artists specialising in portraiture. The competition is open to artists from around the world and this year received a record-number of 955 entrants, all competing for the main prize of £25,000. As well as featuring all the entries from this year's competition, this arresting book includes a fascinating essay by Blake Morrison and powerful portraits by Ulyana Gumeniuk, winner of last year's BP Travel Award. Ulyana's portraits are accompanied by illuminating extracts from her interviews with the sitters. The highly acclaimed writer Blake Morrison looks at the potency of portraiture and how a good portrait painting does not merely capture a likeness, but connects with the inner energy of the sitter, showing the 'flickers of feeling, shadows of thought, or what Leonardo da Vinci called "the motions of the mind"'. Blake Morrison is one of the most versatile writers working in England today. He is a poet, critic, journalist and writer of non-fiction, novels and screenplays. His non-fiction includes the award-winning book And When Did You Last See Your Father? (1993), and he has won a Somerset Maugham Award for a collection of his poems. Published to accompany the summer
exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 17
June to 19 September 2004,
'One of Britain's most prestigious and lucrative art prizes' The Guardian, 2002 The BP Portrait Award, now in its twenty-third year, is a popular fixture on the summer calendar, and is the leading showcase for young artists specialising in portraiture. The competition is open to artists from around the world and consistently receives over 600 entrants each year, all competing for the main prize of £25,000. In her introductory essay the internationally renowned author A.S. Byatt demonstrates how an artist captures a sitter's likeness. The portraitist creates individuality, by perhaps exaggerating a physical feature, such as the hands, or using accessories with symbolic meanings. A.S. Byatt explains how these treatments, amongst others, help us recognise the sitter. She shows the young artists belong to a broad, vibrant culture that includes such celebrated artists as Henri Matisse and Gerhard Richter. As well as featuring all the entries from this year's competition, this arresting book charts the amazing journey on the Trans-Siberian Express by last year's winners of the BP Travel Award. A.S. Byatt is one of England's foremost writers. She won the Booker Prize in 1990 for Possession, and was awarded a C.B.E in the same year. Her book Portraits in Fiction was published in 2002. Published to accompany the major exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London, from 12 June to 21 September 2003, and at Aberdeen Art Gallery from 6 December 2003 to 15 February 2004. 190 x 125mm, 80 pages The BP Portrait Award 2002 'Encourages the best in contemporary figurative portraiture' This book, the first ever full catalogue of the exhibition, includes colour reproductions of the prize winners and all entries selected by the judges for display in 2002, supported by an essay from the renowned journalist and art critic Bill Packer. Attitudes to portraiture have changed dramatically since the Award's inception in 1980. It is now one of Britain's most popular annual exhibitions, each year bringing to the fore new and sometimes undiscovered talent. When Justin Mortimer won the award in 1991, he was propelled into a series of high-profile commissions including HM The Queen, and said that 'Winning the BP Portrait Award was an extraordinary thing: that year I was still an art student and happily ignorant of how to get an artistic career. The prize was the catalyst.' Authors Richard E. Grant first made his name in the cult classic Withnail and I (1987). Since then he has appeared in numerous films on the big screen as well as appearing in a diverse body of work on television. He is also a diarist. William Packer is art critic for the Financial Times. 190 x 125mm, 80 pages BP Portrait
Award 1990-2001 For the first time the National Portrait Gallery will be publishing BP Portrait Award 1990-2001 to coincide with this year's exhibition in June. The book presents an overview of the award through illustrations of the winning and commended portraits for each year since 1990, together with the eight works subsequently commissioned by the Gallery, including such prominent artists as Peter Edwards, Michael Clark, Ishbel Myerscough and Philip Harris. An introductory essay by Martin Gayford celebrates the achievements of the BP Portrait Award both in terms of the artists as individuals and in the context of contemporary portraiture, and in doing so, firmly establishes the portrait as a respected and popular artform. Accompanies the exhibition opening at The Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, from October 2001 to January 2002. 240 x 200mm, 64 pages
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