Face in a Crowd: New Portraiture

Face in a Crowd: New Portraiture

@ Ipswich Art Gallery, Ipswich

A face, a portrait, an image, a photographic representation of a person; what can this say? Can a mere portrait tell you more than words? Ipswich Art Gallery’s Face in a Crowd: New Portraiture aims to question the idea of portraiture itself, using it as a device to critique social norms and an images’ ability to express individuality and identity.

Using portraiture, four artists create photographs, videos and sculptures using methods of morphing and layering, to question the impact of today’s fast paced, consumer and technology driven society. Though unconventional, the works remain on a photographic plane, as they retain the inherent stillness, which allows the viewer to read the images similarly to a photograph; but transcend the more literal definitions of what constitutes a standard print. Each of the artists in the exhibit use photography somehow, whether is be a video still printed and re-sequenced in David Rosetzky’s videoWithout you, 2004, or more conventional still methods such as Simon Obarzanek’s Untitled (80 faces). The exhibition also features artists such as Denis Beaubois and Justine Khamara, offering up both video and photographic sculpture to the viewer.

Justine Kamara’s sculpture, Erysicthon’s Ball, 2010 uses the Greek myth to question modern societies vanity. The large spherical sculpture is made from ten thousand photographs of a single person, shot from different angles to create a three dimensional and obscured image, once it is collaged onto sphere. The subject holds varied facial expressions, referencing the self-absorbed activity of taking and posting a multitude of images of oneself. In which social media sites such as Facebook, have resulted in an individualised attempt to control personal representation and perpetuated the phenomena of self vanity.

Kamara’s photographic sculpture is the clearest example of the hybrid use of photography and portraiture within the exhibition. It leads one to revisit notions of post-medium (as discussed by Rosalind Krauss, Geoffrey Batchen, Anne Marsh and other critics), in which photography re-defines itself. The medium is hybridized with another such as photography and sculpture or painting and the authenticity of the medium itself is questioned, due to its erratic nature. Comparatively Rosetzky’s photo collages also create a sense of depth, not as dramatically three-dimensional, through the use of multiple images which are layered via sliced cut outs. Similarly, the use of video and digital media, manipulated the language and foundations of photography by altering the method by which the viewer digests content. The temporal stillness of a photograph is retained so that only subtle movements are noticeable and make us question the reality of photographic representation. Overall, Face in a Crowd provides an interesting window to critique contemporary society through the use of everyday portraiture, which is intuitively readable and tied to notions of reality and modern existence.

Sancintya Simpson