Since 2008 the National Portrait Gallery (NPG), Canberra, has pushed the boundary of contemporary portraiture with shows such as ‘doppelgänger’, 2009, and ‘Behind your eyes, between your ears’, just last year. However the NPG’s most prominent and enduring contribution to the form is the annual ‘Digital Portraiture Award’. The finalists were chosen out of 270 entries by judges; Gillian Raymond, Penny Grist, Karen Vickery and Daniel Flood and include artists Luke Aleksandrow, Lucas Davidson, Kailum Graves, Sophie Hyde, Paul Mumme, Nic Vevers and 2016 winner Amiel Courtin-Wilson.
Sophie Hyde, To Look Away – Tilda, 2015, single-channel HD digital video; 18 minutes 9 seconds (looped). Courtesy the artist and National Portrait Gallery, Australian Capital Territory
Courtin-Wilson’s video Charles (2015) is a lush, brooding and mesmerising moment with a stranger. The artist’s developed sensitivity towards his subjects is the culmination of a lifelong career in documentary filmmaking. In previous projects Courtin-Wilson collaborated closely with his subjects, sometimes over several years and his connection with Charles is apparent. Shot in slow motion, the portrait produces a heightened response to the subject’s state of awe, contemplation or transcendence. What was a brief moment of intensity in actuality has been captured skilfully and extended through the medium, to produce a potent work. In addition to the cash prize Courtin-Wilson will also undertake a residency program with The Edge at the State Library of Queensland.
Amiel Courtin-Wilson, Charles, (video still), 2015, single-channel HD digital video, soundtrack by Eliane Radigue (Jetsun Milla), 6 minutes 29 seconds. Courtesy the artist and National Portrait Gallery, Australian Capital Territory
Both Lucas Davidson and Kailum Graves present more anatomical self-portraits, testing the solidity of the human figure through movement and transparency. Though visually disparate each work transforms images of flesh into lively and ambiguous membranes. Davidson’s Body Emulsion Detachment (2016) records a photographic film being agitated and contorted in a dance of overlapping form. The artist states a desire to create a self-portrait in which change is the only constant. Graves’, Transillumination (A Moment of Noise in Memory of Absence) (2016) is made up of small square cropped ‘slices’ of his body, photographed through skin using the light of his phone. Referencing display technology, these sections of flesh reference, in an abstract pulsating grid of soft hues, the increasing quantification of the human body and the encroachment of mobile technologies into and through our tissue.
Kailum Graves, Transillumination (A moment of Noise in Memory of Absence), 2016, single-channel HD digital video still. Courtesy the artist and National Portrait Gallery, Australian Capital Territory
More performative self-portraits by Paul Mumme and Luke Aleksandrow continue a tradition of images that reflect the artist at work. Talking directly to the audience, Mumme, confides his feeling of futility and frustration with art, bemoans his lack of impact and time wasted, finally proclaiming a “resignation from art”. While visually portraying a self-assured, successful, celebrity version of himself, Mumme contradicts this image in the dialogue of regret and failure. Despite the irony and sarcasm in the piece there is also an underlying honesty. By contrast Aleksandrow’s film is mostly silent, visually sparse and largely interpretive. The artist’s personal difficulties during a residency in remote Finland have manifest in a drive to develop his ceramic practice toward documented performance. Making reference to Ai Weiwei’s Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn (1995), Aleksandrow’s personal ceramic destruction appears not to be an act of dissidence or provocative vandalism but a meditation on breaking silence and action in space.
Paul Mumme, The Last Paul Mumme Work (video still), 2 minutes 57 seconds, single-channel HD digital video. Courtesy the artist and National Portrait Gallery, Australian Capital Territory
Sophisticated and skilful, the group challenge conventions of portraiture and as a result the NPG continues to educate visitors and encourage audiences to confront traditional notions of identity. However, now in its 5th year, the exhibition format remains largely unchanged, showing screen based digital video. The selection does little to discuss the way that contemporary society and artistic practice are engaging with digital media today. For a technology-based platform such as digital portraiture there is room for greater representation of experimentation and innovation within the medium itself.
Grace Blake is a new media artist working between Canberra and Sydney. In 2016 she travelled to Chiang Mai University, Thailand, Institute of Contemporary Art, Singapore and Rimbun Dahan Art Centre, Malaysia supported by the ‘New Colombo Plan’, an Australian Government scholarship.
National Portrait Gallery
Until 9 April, 2017
Australian Capital Territory
