About

Family Faces is the second exhibition in the National Portrait Gallery's community initiative Reaching Out, Drawing In.

Families from the London Borough of Haringey worked alongside ceramicist Matt Sherratt to create clay sculptures that represent their families.

The participants visited the National Portrait Gallery to explore family portraits in the collection. They then took part in a series of workshops to make their own artwork.

These sculptures and a selection of the portraits that inspired them are displayed side by side in this exhibition. Each work is accompanied by the participants' interpretations, offering an insight into the lives of the families.

The exhibition also contains activity areas that families and other visitors are welcome to use during their visit.

The project

Over sixty families took part in the Family Faces project. They are all part of Haringey's Parental Involvement Programme, based in seven different schools.

Family Faces took place over a six-month period. The aim was for family members to work together to create a sculpture representing their families. Children worked alongside parents, carers, grandparents and siblings.

The families participated in a series of workshops:
First they visited the Gallery, exploring and sketching family portraits. They focused on The Shudi Family Group by Marcus Tuscher and The Sharp Family by Johan Zoffany.
Back at school they designed their sculptures.
The next few sessions were spent making sculptures. They chose either to work in air-drying clay, or clay that would need to be fired in a kiln.
After the sculptures had either dried or been fired. Those that worked with air-drying clay used poster paints. Families who worked with fired clay used special glazes. After glazing, the sculptures were fired again making them shine.
Finally the families wrote their own label to accompany their sculpture.

The families involved in this project are all part of Haringey's Parental Involvement Programme based at the following schools: Chestnuts Primary School; Crowland Primary School; Highgate Primary School; Kurdish and Somali Community Supplementary School; North Harringay Primary School; South Harringay Infants School and Stamford Hill Primary School.

The exhibition

Family Faces displays 90 sculptures that have been made by the participating families. They offer a varied and personal insight into the lives of the families that took part and are accompanied by the participants' interpretations.

Alongside the sculptures is a selection of portraits from the Gallery's collections that inspired the families during the project. These include The Shudi Family Group by Marcus Tuscher and The Fine Children of Charles I after Sir Anthony Van Dyck.

Visitors to the exhibition are invited to participate in a number of activities including making fuzzy-felt faces and jigsaws, dressing-up clothes and a reading area.