Saturday, June 20, 2009

Exhibition Review: BP Travel Award 2008 - Emmanouil Bitsakis

Portraits of people of the Uigur tribe in the Xinjiang-Uigur Autonomous Region (north west China)
by Emmanouil Bitsakis
all art copyright Emmanouil Bitsakis / all photos copyright Katherine Tyrrell

One of the delights of the BP Portrait Award exhibition is the opportunity to see the work done by whoever won the BP Travel Award in the previous year.

The BP Travel Award 2008

The BP Travel Award is an annual award of £5,000, to allow artists to experience working in a different environment on a project related to portraiture. The aim of the award is to give an artist an experience of working in a different enviroment in Britain or abroad on a project related to portraiture. The artist's work is then shown in the following year as part of the exhibition for the BP portrait Award.

Last year, the NPG asked for submissions for the 2008 award to only be based in China - to celebrate China's hosting of the 2008 Olympic and Paralymic Games in Beijing.

In 2008 the BP Travel Award was won by Emmanouil Bitsakis. His project involved visiting Xinjiang-Uigur Autonomous Region (north west China)..........
"Xinjiang" or "Ice Jecen" in Manchu, literally means "New Frontier", "New Land", "New dominion" a name given during the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China.[1] It is home to a number of different ethnic groups, many of them Turkic (Turkish: Sincan), the largest of which is the Uyghur people.
Wikipedia - Xinjiang
.......to document the life and culture of the Uigur.
The Uigur are a national minority in China who predominate in this region. Originating from Turkic peoples the Uigur remain culturally distinct from the Han Chinese and their exceptional music and dance idiom, Muqam, is a core pillar of their identity and culture.
He based himself in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang and a city of 2 million people and then travelled from there to Kashgar (see images from Google) and east to Turpan - a key town on the old silk road.

Kashgar is an original medieval town which is very close to the border with the former Soviet Union

Emmanouil Bitsakis Sketchbook
Turpan, Kashgar
22nd October - 4th November 2008
Music and dance performances are commonplace in Kashgar, and form an indispensable part of social gatherings. Turpan, another town with a dense Uigur population is famous for its vineywards and its local 'Turpan Muqam' music, song and danci idiom.
Emmanoiul Bitsakis

The Travel Award exhibition comprises portraits he painted of the heads of men and women and children, plus a 'slideshow' of scanned images from his sketchbooks - such as the group of men playing their instruments (Above right).

Also on display are the tiny drawings he did of the various musical instruments. These are done on a sketchbook which is smaller than most business cards. The drawings are tiny and meticulous.

Drawings of the musical instruments of the Uigur
Emmanouil Bitsakis

For me this exhibition really demonstrates what can be accomplished when somebody draws and paints with a project in mind. Particularly one which connects to their own interests or some part of their own experience or cultural identity.

Bitsakis's drawings and paintings are small for practical reasons - he needed to transport materials out there and completed drawings and paintings back again - but are no less fine for that. His meticulous approach to creating faithful records of both the people their cultural artifacts faithfully is very apparent in both drawings and paintings.

BP Travel Award 2009

The BP Travel Award for 2009 has been won by Isobel Peachey who painted Ruth. She receives a bursary of £5,000 to travel and paint portraits for display in next year’s BP Portrait Award exhibition.

Her travel proposal involves travelling to Belgium and Switzerland to sketch and paint portraits of those taking part in historical re-enactments.
  • She will visit The Company of Saynt George, a Swiss group re-enacting the history of a small artillery company from the 15th Century at the Castle of Lenzburg, near Zurich, and
  • The Napoleonic Association who portray the life of a military encampment near Antwerp in Belgium.
Her aim is to capture the unique mix of history, culture, authentic settings and the participants’ passionate involvement in recreating the past.

Links:
Posted by Making A Mark on Saturday, June 20, 2009 0 comments
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Thursday, June 18, 2009

Exhibition review: BP Portrait Award

This year the BP Portrait Award 2009 exhibition has a much greater range of sizes and approaches to portrait painting than seen in recent years - which I very much applaud.

It suggested to me a jury who were much less enamoured of the enormous photorealistic "big heads" which have tended to dominate in recent years. Instead we have an awful lot of small heads!

However that said, they still appreciate a well painted head when one presents itself - see for example my earlier post today - Sue Rubira makes her mark on BP Portrait

You can read about the prizewinners in yesterday's post Peter Monkman wins first prize in BP Portrait Award 2009

(Left to right) Paintings: Changeling 2 by Peter Monkman (the winner),
White Linen by Jennifer Anderson;
My Grandmother by Ho-Jun Lee;
She-Ra by Eleanor McCaughey
All artwork copyright the artist / All photos copyright Katherine Tyrrell

(Left to right) Paintings: Portrait of my daughter by Michelle Carey Clarke;
Harry Patch by Dan Llywelyn Hall;
Brittattani by June Glasson
Madeleine by Jayne Cooper,
2 by Stephen Earl Rogers
Benfica Blue by Mark Jameson;
Eva by Natan Pernick

(Left to right) Paintings: Imagine by José Luis Corella,
(Left to right) Paintings: George by Louis Smith;
Ruth by Isobel Peachey (winner of the 2009 Travel Award)
The Rt. Hon. Lord Poltimore, Chairman of Sotheby’s Russia and Deputy Chairman of Sotheby’s Europe by Elena Baranoff
Lord Armstrong of Ilminster by Daphne Todd PPRSPP
Grandmother by SACRIS

From my own perspective, I'm still not seeing enough full figure poses for my liking. This is after all a competition where the first prize includes a commission to create a portrait which will become part of the National Portrait Gallery. To my mind all those who reach the final should be capable of delivering that commission. When I look around the rest of the National Portrait Gallery I see an awful lot more full figure portraits and/or portraits involving torso and heads and many fewer 'big heads'. It makes you think.

It seems to me that prospective artists could be given a heavy nudge by the competition organisers to think about demonstrating their skills to do more than just paint a head.

Below is one of my favourites in the exhibition. It's a double portrait (and we don't see enough of those either!) by Jennifer McRea. Her very splendid full length portrait of Michael Frayn is hanging just down the corridor. McRae has exhibited five times in the BP Portrait Award and was winner of the Travel Award in 1999.

Movers and Shakers: Patat and Geoffrey Eastop
by Jennifer McRae
1220 x 1520 mm

Another suggestion I'd like to make, following discusions yesterday with fellow artists and reviewers, would be to ask the artists to keep a record of the painting as it progresses. The final 100 could then be asked to produce these records for review alongside the paintings. Such records give a much better idea of the approach used and how fast an artist works. Some of us looked at one or two of the paintings with a rather critical eye and memories of what happened with the debacle over the American Watercolor Society Gold Medal 2008.

Details about the exhibition

The Portrait Award, now in its 30th year at the National Portrait Gallery and 20th year of sponsorship by BP, is a highly successful annual event with both artists and the viewing public

Its aim is to encourage artists to focus upon, and develop, the theme of painted portraiture within their work.

This year The BP Portrait Award was judged anonymously from 1,901 registered entries. For the third year running, the competition has been open to all over the age of 18, and of the 1,901 entries 881 (46%) were from artists aged 40 or over. 524 entries (28% of the total) came from outside the UK. 56 portraits (38 from the UK and 18 from abroad) have been selected for the exhibition. (You can see furteher analysis of the numbers in BP Portrait Award - who enters and who gets selected)

The competition was judged from original paintings by this year’s panel;
  • James Holloway, Director, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
  • Charlotte Mullins, art historian and critic
  • Sandy Nairne, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London (Chair)
  • Des Violaris, Director, UK Arts and Culture, BP
  • Gillian Wearing, artist
Admission to the exhibitions for the BP Portrait Award 2009 and Travel Award 2008 is free. The exhibition is on display at
A fully-illustrated book accompanies the exhibition and features an introductory essay by Sarah Dunant, the best-selling author of the The Birth of Venus. The BP Portrait Award 2009 book will be published on 18 June 2008, and will include 60 colour illustrations, price £8.50 (pbk).

[Update: You can now read Book Review: BP Portrait Award 2009 catalogue]

For those of you wanting to keep the competition at the front of your brain so you enter next year, you can also download a mobile wallpaper or buy a poster! Note also that you can buy a print of any of the paintings in the final exhibition if you want to take a much closer look at a painting.

and finally.......

Here's a photo of the artist and his muse! Peter Monkman had his daughter with him yesterday in rather better lighting that that Brittany wood!

Anna Monkman, Changeling 2 and BP Portrait Award Winner 2009 Peter Monkman

Links
Links to past posts in previous years about the BP Portrait Award on this blog:
and
Making a Mark reviews......

Posted by Making A Mark on Thursday, June 18, 2009 4 comments
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Sue Rubira makes her mark on BP Portrait

Sue Rubira with her portrait of her mother Maggie
oil on canvas, 1020 x 760mm (40" x 29")
copyright the artist / photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

When I walked into the exhibition of the BP Portrait Award 2009, one of the very first paintings I saw - from across the room and about 30 feet away - was a painting of Maggie by her daughter Sue Rubira. I was so pleased! We'd had an email discussion about the BP Portrait Award after I'd seen her watercolour painting of Maggie in the show at the Bankside Gallery, after which I wrote
I also very much liked Sue Rubira's giant and striking face of "Maggie". You can see the finished version on her blog here and also see stages on the blog posts prior to that. Given that one of her previous paintings came second in the 2006 Singer and Friedlander (watercolour) competition, I'm rather expecting to see another of Sue's excellent portraits winning a prize at the BP Portrait Award exhibition at the NPG
Making A Mark (2nd March 2007) - 21st Century Watercolours at Bankside Gallery
Sue and I subsequently exchanged emails about how it was sad that the BP Portrait didn't accept watercolour paintings. I expressed a hope that I'd one day one see one of her portraits - in oil - in the BP portrait exhibition.

Two years later, that hope was fulfilled and the portrait is brilliant!

It was a huge pleasure for me to meet with Sue for the very first time yesterday morning. It's always so nice to be put a face to the artist behind a painting and an email address!

She told me a little bit about how she works. The portrait is of her mother Maggie and was painted from life (ie no photos!) in two months - working most days. Fortunately her studio is very near to where her mother lives which made life much simpler for both model and artist!
I don't want it to look like a photo! ......My Mum had to put up with my face in her face all the time - two inches from hers - while I studied each part of her face.
Sue Rubira
Sue's camera is her sketchbook and she starts her portraits by taking hundreds of photos - without using flash - to sort out pose and lighting. Using a digital camera she can produce the design, the set-up, placement on the canvas and the position of the model in relation to natural lighting. In this instance her Mum was top-lit from a skylight. Sue explained that the photos are then put away and she starts to create the portrait using Michael Harding handmade oil paint and painting from life every day. As she explained, it was the way she was taught. When she was a student (at Bristol and the Royal College of Art) she was never allowed to use a camera to develop her art so she had to develop her skills in painting from life. Which, for me, is a very cogent explanation of why Sue's work is so good!

I'm also very impressed with Sue's Mum for being so patient during the sittings! Greater love hath no Mum than when she sits for her child!

What was fascinating is that although this portrait is highly realistic in a classical way, it seemed to attract a lot of very positive comments about Maggie in terms of being a somewhat generic Mum. For example, Josef from the Pollocks blog said it reminded him an awful lot of his Mum!

You can see how Sue developed this painting on her blog
What I like most about this painting is the way it celebrates the art of painting. It's highly realistic but at no point looks like a photograph when you see it in the gallery - it looks like and is a painting.

...and painting people rather than photographing them and copying photographs is, after all, what the BP Portrait Award is all about.
Posted by Making A Mark on Thursday, June 18, 2009 5 comments
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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Peter Monkman wins first prize in BP Portrait Award 2009

Peter Monkman with the first prize in the BP Portrait Award 2009
Changeling 2
(oil on canvas, 1220 x 900 mm)
copyright the artist / photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The best compliment I've had so far is "It's strange!" said Peter Monkman last night shortly after he was awarded the prestigious £25,000 first prize in the BP Portrait Award 2009. His winning portrait is one of a series of portraits of his daughter Anna at different stages of her life.
I challenge the fixed notion of an idealised image of childhood and substitute it for a more unsettling, complex, representation that exists in its own right as a painting.
Peter Monkman
He developed the painting after taking a series of photographs of his daughter playing in woods in Brittany. The trees altered the light and the colour of her skin. The portrait works on two levels. It's both a record of his daughter on that day. At the same time it explores the concept of the child who is a changeling - a creature who in western folklore is really the offspring of fairies or elves and who has secretly been left in the place of a human child.

It's also one of those paintings which I found I liked a lot more when face to face with it than I did when I saw it as a photograph. The skin tones are really weird and fascinating at the same time - and I know Peter won't mind me saying that! It's also a fine example of somebody using photographs as a reference but without creating a photorealistic painting - which to my mind is to be applauded. I'm all for the art of painting!

Art historian and critic, Charlotte Mullins told me that the portrait breezed through the first two rounds without any problem but that it wasn't until the judges had got the 1,901 entries down to the final 100 that they began to realise the true quality of this portrait. Their choice of Changeling 2 for first prize was unanimous - which I gather is unusual.
It's incredibly bewitching and beguiling
Charlotte Mullins, Judge - BP Portrait Award 2009
I chatted to Peter Monkman (45) shortly before the prize-giving and we agreed that the really nice thing about the BP Portrait Awards is that all the artists who are invited know that they have won something! He's currently the Director of Art at Charterhouse School in Surrey and was telling me that the whole school was waiting to hear what he'd won so I can imagine what he must have been feeling like! (Well done to Charterhouse for their very fast update of their website!). His wife was texting all their family, friends and the school straight after the prizegiving ceremony. She told me they'd made it very easy for her by telling her to just text 1,2 or 3!

It's particularly nice to see another artist aged over 40 win the Award, following the change in the rules three years ago. Now aged 45, he'd had to give up entering the Award when he got to 40. Peter has previously had work included in the BP Portrait Exhibition in 1999, 2001, and 2003 - and it just goes to prove you should never give up!

Second Prize (£8,000): My tip for the prize Michael Gaskell must be a very disappointed man as this is the second time he's come second - both times to a first prizewinner who had been shortlisted for the first time. Nevertheless one of the judges told me that in another year his very beautiful portrait in egg tempera of his son Tom aged 17 would have won.
He was at the period in adolescence between boy and manhood and fleetingly suspended between both.

In spirit my painting owes most to Botticelli’s Portrait of a Young Man which is its primary inspiration and a painting I’ve always loved. The pose itself is more reminiscent of a number of portraits by Holbein, an artist I greatly admire.
I'm absolutely sure that Gaskell will win this prize at some point in the future as his portrait is exquisite - it's cetainly a contemporary equivalent of a Holbein or a Van Eyck. He won 2nd prize in 2003 and was commended in both 2001 and 1999.

(Left) Second prize - Michael Gaskell (b.1963) for Tom (egg tempera on board, 270 x 210 mm)
(Right) Third Prize - Annalisa Avancini (b.1973 ) for Manuel (oil on board, 1000 x 800)
artwork copyright the artists / photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell
Third Prize (£6,000): Charlotte Mullins told me that she really liked the way that Annalisa Avancini had managed to portray vulnerability in a man as it is something rarely attempted or achieved. Avancini, 35, is a painter and design teacher from Trento in Italy. Her work has been in numerous exhibitions throughout Europe and the United States. In 2006 she won First Prize in the 1st Contemporary Art Show 2006 at the Museum of the Americas, Miami and the Painting Prize for Young Artists 2007 at the Verona Fine Art Society.

The BP Young Artist Award for the work of an entrant aged between 18 and 30 (£5,000): Mark Jameson

Mark Jameson (b.1979) for Benfica Blue
(oil and acrylic on canvas, 1220 x 762 mm)
copyright the artist / photo copyright Katherine Tyrrell

Mark Jameson, 29, comes from County Durham and graduated from Sunderland University with a degree in Fine Art in 2003.

He painted his award winning portrait of his sister, Lyndsey at his parent's house in less than a month.
It was my intention to capture aspects of the subject’s persona, but also to convey this in a modern and relevant way. That said the acrid colours and an informal composition contribute to an accessible and honest account. This piece is not to my mind entirely finished. I hope that perhaps its technical shortcomings are in keeping with the character of the piece.
Jameson hopes to be able to become a full time artist in the future and is available for commissions.

Exhibition - Exhibitions for The BP Portrait Award 2009 and Travel Award 2008 can be seen at the National Portrait Gallery, London

The exhibition opens to the public tomorrow - 18th June - and continues until 20th September 2009, after which it will tour the UK. Admission is free.

I'm going back this morning to view it again minus all the people at last night's awards ceremony! On first viewing, it's looking very impressive and has a greater range of pieces in both size and approach than in recent years. I liked it a lot and I'm looking forward to being able to see all the portraits again.

Come back tomorrow to read my review of the exhibition and on Friday to read about the Travel exhibition - and who won the Travel Prize this year.

BP Portrait Award - The aim of the Portrait Award is to encourage artists to focus upon, and develop, the theme of painted portraiture within their work. It is now in its 30th year at the National Portrait Gallery and 20th year of sponsorship by BP. The BP Portrait Award is both a very prestigious and highly successful annual event which attarcts entries from all over the world. This year artists from 53 countries sent in entries.

The competition was judged from original paintings by this year’s panel;
  • James Holloway, Director, Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
  • Charlotte Mullins, art historian and critic
  • Sandy Nairne, Director, National Portrait Gallery, London (Chair)
  • Des Violaris, Director, UK Arts and Culture, BP
  • Gillian Wearing, artist
and finally......

I'd just like to highlight what a pleasure it was listen to Sebastien Faulks' speech last night. I do hope they manage to get hold of it and to post it to the NPG website as it said some very cogent things about portraiture. I jotted down a few of them....but would now like the words which join them together!
the depiction of human beings is a primitive thing that artists have always done

it's a unique faculty of human consciousness

sense of self-awareness and awareness of the other

some people's faces never betray what's going on behind them

I dislike portraits which are anthropological and I love portraits where there is an engagement between the artist and the sitter
Links

  • BP Portrait Award 2009 18th June and 20th September 2009
  • National Portrait Gallery, St Martin’s Place, London, WC2H 0HE Opening hours: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, Sunday: 10am – 6pm (Gallery closure commences at 5.50pm) Late Opening: Thursday, Friday: 10am – 9pm (Gallery closure commences at 8.50pm)
Links to past posts about the BP Portrait Award on this blog:
and
Making a Mark reviews......
Posted by Making A Mark on Wednesday, June 17, 2009 6 comments
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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

The Urban Sketchers Manifesto - final draft


USk founder Gabi Campanario has just posted his final draft manifesto for Urban Sketchers on the blog. His intention is to have a clear statement of purpose of what the main Urban Sketchers blog and the new USk city blogs and the the Flickr group should be about.

I've reproduced it below.
Urban Sketchers Manifesto
  1. We draw on location, indoors or out, capturing what we see from direct observation.
  2. Our drawings tell the story of our surroundings, the places we live and where we travel.
  3. Our drawings are a record of time and place.
  4. We are truthful to the scenes we witness. We don't exaggerate reality or caricaturize people.
  5. We use any kind of media and cherish our individual styles.
  6. We support each other and draw together.
  7. We share our drawings online.
  8. We show the world, one drawing at a time.
I like it.

It seems to me to capture the essence of people who sketch their surroundings:
  • that we do it real time (and not from photos),
  • that we make a record (rather than create a product),
  • that we are all individual with own unqiue perspective and styles (and we don't copy other people) and
  • that we use whatever media works for us (no need to do the same thing as somebody else)
  • that we share our sketches online!
I guess the only bit that doesn't feel quite right is the community bit. That's because urban sketchers has grown so very big so very fast. I'm not sure I feel part of a community in the same way that others do - and I think that has influenced how often I now post on the blog

It's certainly a lesson I learned and have tried to put to good use when creating Sketchercise. In Sketchercise, we've decided that want to start small and only grow slowly. We need enough people to make it work - but the idea was to have a real community group for people who want to exercise and sketch. To my mind fast growth can cause all sorts of issues and problems and slower and more organic growth can work much better in maintaining community participation the long run.

After all - small is beautiful - and I think quite a lot of us would like to be a little bit smaller!

PS Spot a certain well known sketcher from Hertfordshire in the little picture!

Making a Mark reviews......

Posted by Making A Mark on Tuesday, June 16, 2009 3 comments
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