Various artists: Beforehand - the private life of a portrait. National Portrait Gallery. Until February 14, 2021.
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Beforehand - the private life of a portrait is about the backstories behind iconic works from the National Portrait Gallery's collection and the creative and social process of making a portrait. It features excellent works in a variety of media, including 13 photographic prints.
Entering the exhibition, the first things visitors can read is about storytelling. We are told a portrait captures a person's presence in time as well as space; tells a story about lived experience - at times conveying a sense of the subject's past and future. I suspect the vast majority of portraits, including selfies captured by smart phones today, tell very little about lived experience. However, those who are serious about creating good portraits would do well to think about telling their subject's stories.
The exhibition reveals the creative journeys behind the portraits, showing us working drawings, studies, scrapbooks, sketches and footage taken in studios or on location. Interviews with artists and sitters tell us much more, revealing relationships and connections between the two parties that generated the story being told.
An interview with champion woodchopper David Foster provides an excellent example of storytelling. Foster is pictured before a tree that he says has witnessed all the years of his family and the legacy of their championships. Photographer Jacqui Stockdale responds, "Wow, what the tree saw" and uses that as the title for her image. The collaborative nature of their relationship produced a portrait capturing the essence of Foster's story.
Greg Weight's portrait of contemporary artist Lindy Lee shows her standing within one of her own installations. Weight is present with Lee and has captured her much as he might capture a landscape, connecting us with her creativity.
Ian Lloyd has also photographed leading artists throughout Australia. His portrait of the acclaimed Indigenous artist Gloria Petyarre was taken as she applied layer on layer of dots on a canvas. The resultant image is remarkable, revealing clearly who she is: "an Anmatyerre woman from the Atnangkere country, near Alice Springs". It is her country, her family's country, the country she loves. Lloyd shows how his subject has touched and shaped many others.
When cyclist Anna Meares and photographer Narelle Autio met before their shoot, both were delighted to learn that neither wanted Meares wearing Lycra or riding her bicycle. Both wanted an image of who she was, rather than what she did. The image taken amongst the trees and rocks in the Adelaide Hills clearly shows something of her toughness; the dress she wears shows her femininity.
Peter Brew-Bevan's image of the artistic director of the Australian Ballet, David McAllister, is stunning. It most successfully portrays the elegant motion of ballet, whilst delighting McAllister by showing what he describes as a "pensive moment".
The image reveals much about Brew-Bevan as well. His own energy is a major part of the shot's energy, so it becomes a self-portrait of him as well as a portrait of McAllister.
In a similar way, Hari Ho's portrait of Dadang Christanto is a document of a powerful moment of performance in both of their practices.
All who have seen Christanto's Heads from the North in the National Gallery's Sculpture Garden, will immediately see and relate to Ho's intentions here.
Most of us have followed Jessica Mauboy's career, either closely or at least with some interest. David Rosetzky's portrait splendidly conveys her energy.
Every portrait in this exhibition reveals something of the stories of the subjects and it is well worth spending time with each work, thinking about what is revealed about lived experiences.
