Performance Portraits

This exhibition is temporarily closed until and will reopen on 29 July.

The collection of video and photographic works in this exhibition from the Gallery’s collection, shows artists using the conventions of portraiture and performance to expand the terms of photography and video art.

The majority of these time-based works borrow from traditional portrait photography – the conventions of a fixed camera position, a head and shoulder portrait, or a carefully composed presentation of their subject. To these characteristics they apply video’s ability to shift the stilled moment into something akin to a film narrative, while keeping the action extremely delineated. In turn, the ‘pose’ becomes a kind of performance.

These artists use their art form to tease out the subtle and often complex differences between posing and acting, ignoring or engaging the camera; and the differences in our experience of time, which can sometimes oscillate between the poles of boredom and entertainment.