Out of Print

BP Portrait Award 2004
Essay by Blake Morrison
'One of Britain's most prestigious and lucrative art prizes'
The Guardian

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,
the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, from 2 October to 13 November, Aberdeen Art Gallery from 4 December 2004 to 22 January 2005 and the Royal West of England Academy, Bristol, from 27 February to 26 March 2005.

190 x 125mm, 80 pages
With 60 colour illustrations
ISBN 1 85514 344 5
Special Gallery price £5.99 (RRP £7.50) (paperback)
Published 17 June 2004

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All images and text are subject to copyright protection. 12 May 2008