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Current Exhibitions and Displays | News | Forthcoming Exhibitions and Displays | Exhibition Archive | News Archive
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PORTRAIT OF ASPIRING PARALYMPIAN WINS TOP PHOTOGRAPHY PRIZE (5 Nov 2009 - 14 Feb 2010)
Read press release | View images The 2009 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize has been won by Paul Floyd Blake, 47, for his portrait of 13-year-old swimmer Rosie Bancroft, who hopes to compete in the 2012 Paralympic Games. The portrait of the teenager, who had her right foot removed when she was ten months old, was taken in a swimming pool changing room in her home town of Oxford. Blake says, ‘Rosie was competing throughout the day and there was only a short window when I could take the picture. She had just swum a personal best in her event and I think that’s why she has such a confident, self-assured look in the portrait.’
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BEATLES TO BOWIE: THE 60s EXPOSED (15 Oct 2009 - 24 Jan 2010)
Read press release | View images A major photographic exhibition Beatles to Bowie: the 60s exposed opens at the National Portrait Gallery, to herald the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the 1960s in 2010. Celebrating the leading pop music personalities and groups who helped create “Swinging London” in the 1960s, the exhibition will show how The Beatles and rivals such as the Rolling Stones and The Kinks set the musical agenda. Bringing together 150 photographs and 150 items of ephemera including record sleeves, illustrated sheet music and magazines, the exhibition will be arranged chronologically in ten sections covering each year of the decade.
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CHASING MIRRORS (9 Oct 2009 - 10 Jan 2010)
Read press release | View images Chasing Mirrors is an exhibition of new work exploring alternative forms of self-representation and portraiture by contemporary artist Faisal Abdu’Allah and the Chasing Mirrors Collective, a group of young people from Arabic-speaking communities in Brent, Barnet and Ealing.
As a response to the National Portrait Gallery’s Collection the artists set about creating a reflection of their own identity, age and ethnicity, to be displayed at the Gallery. Avoiding conventional portraiture, the finished works show differences and similarities between members of the Chasing Mirrors Collective and the audience in these multi-dimensional portraits. The exhibition marks the start of a three-year project at the Gallery made possible through funding from John Lyon’s Charity.
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TWIGGY: A LIFE IN PHOTOGRAPHS (19 Sep 2009 - 21 Mar 2010)
Read press release | View images A new display at the National Portrait Gallery will celebrate Twiggy’s 60th birthday and the publication of a new photographic biography of her life. One of the best-known and most respected models of all time Twiggy has worked with many of the world’s leading photographers and a selection of the most iconic and important of these portraits will be on show at the Gallery.
Twiggy says, ‘Over my career I’ve had the privilege of working with many great photographers. I’m very excited to see so many of these portraits coming together at the National Portrait Gallery and in my new book. It’s really interesting to see how fashion photography and portraiture have evolved throughout my career. I hope that this display and book will give people the opportunity to see these pictures that have captured definitive moments in my career. ‘
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JOHN GIBBONS: PORTRAITS (12 Sep 2009 - 14 Mar 2010)
Read press release | View images The first display of portraits by the sculptor John Gibbons has opened at the National Portrait Gallery. It is the latest in the Gallery’s Interventions series focusing on twentieth-century artists who have developed innovatory approaches to portraiture.
This display, comprising dramatic works in welded steel, explores Gibbons’s treatment of the human head as a ‘container’ for experience, identity, personality and mind. A special wall-mounted installation has been constructed to showcase five powerful sculptures, dating from 1981 to the present, which transform industrial materials into enigmatic cage-like forms. Three of the sculptures appear to float high up on angled shelves built into the Gallery walls whilst two smaller ones are given a more intimate setting at a low level.
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SCIENCE IN FOCUS: PORTRAITS OF SCIENTISTS (26 Aug 2009 - 17 Jan 2010)
Read press release | View images Two newly acquired collections of photographs of scientists against backgrounds relevant to their pioneering work will form a new display at the National Portrait Gallery. Colour portraits by Anita Corbin and John O’Grady, exhibited for the first time in the United Kingdom, will be shown alongside black and white portraits by Anne-Katrin Purkiss.
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THE LIFE AND LIVES OF SAMUEL JOHNSON (18 Jul 2009 - 13 Dec 2009)
Read press release | View images To celebrate the 300th anniversary of the birth of Dr Samuel Johnson the National Portrait Gallery is mounting a special display of portraits of the great writer and his circle. Using prints and drawings from the Gallery’s Collection the display will also include portraits of those whose ‘lives’ he wrote such as John Milton and Alexander Pope, alongside his contemporary biographers and the satirical prints that emerged in response to the race to record his life.
The display will show how Johnson’s appearance was recorded by at least twelve artists and his portrait disseminated widely through the medium of print. He was often depicted with books or writings tools in a tradition for representing authors that goes back to the Ancient Greeks. Also included in the display are portraits of the key people in his life including David Garrick, Sir Joshua Reynolds, James Boswell and Hester Lynch Piozzi.
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GEORGE ALWAYS: PORTRAITS OF GEORGE MELLY BY MAGGI HAMBLING (27 Jun 2009 - 10 Jan 2010)
Read press release George Always, Maggi Hambling’s tribute to her friend the late George Melly will be on public display in London for the first time in June. The National Portrait Gallery will show the last twelve ink drawings the jazz singer posed for alongside oil paintings made from life, memory and imagination. |
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BOB DYLAN 1966 EUROPEAN TOUR: PHOTOGRAPHS BY BARRY FEINSTEIN (11 May 2009 - 29 Nov 2009)
Read press release | View images Photographs of Bob Dylan’s 1966 European Tour by Barry Feinstein will be displayed for the first time in London at the National Portrait Gallery in May. These photographs offer a rare insight into the time when Dylan was arguably at his most controversial and iconic.
Having taken the portrait of Bob Dylan that appeared on the sleeve of his 1964 album The Times They are A-Changin, Feinstein was commissioned by LIFE magazine to photograph the 1966 European tour. It was on this tour that Dylan was famously jeered on stage for using an electric guitar. The photographs on display were taken in Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, London, Bristol, and Paris. These are not conventional hackneyed shots of Dylan performing but a private view of an introspective Dylan captured amongst the endless hotel rooms, engagements and travel involved with the tour.
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