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Stuart Pearson Wright
by Eamonn McCabe
2005
NPG x131779

This display of fourteen portraits of contemporary artists celebrates the publication of Eamonn McCabe's new book, Artists and their Studios (Text by Michael McNay, Angela Patchell Books).

McCabe began his photographic career in the 1970s. He joined the Observer in 1976 and was voted Sports Photographer of the Year four times between 1978 and 1984. In 1988 he moved to the Guardian as Picture Editor and became the chief photographer of the Guardian profile portrait. In 2000 he left the picture desk to concentrate on photographing people in the arts.

The book includes portraits of thirty-three artists in their studios, of which fourteen are shown here. The subjects span fifty years of art making from those who came to prominence in the 1950s and 1960s and are still working today. These include Howard Hodgkin and Bridget Riley, whilst Richard Long and Michael Craig-Martin emerged in the 1970s and 1980s. Three recent Turner Prize winners, Chris Ofili, Grayson Perry and Simon Starling, are shown in the context of their contemporaries, Stuart Pearson Wright and Maggi Hambling, working in figurative art.

In the foreword for Artists and their Studios, Maggi Hambling notes:

'This series reveals artists and the mysterious hot-houses in which they work. Both are usually kept under wraps, but doors have been opened and the intruder trusted.'
'The places are as diverse as their in-habitants and Eamonn's photographs portray visual facts, not trendy, glitzy effects.'