Archived Event: Portraits

Portraits took six portraits from Tanya Raabe's Who'S WhO series of works and placed them alongside work by the people she paints.

Featured Artists:

Tanya Raabe
Dr Paul Darke
Mat Fraser
Colin Hambrook
Tony Heaton
Julie McNamara
Allan Sutherland

Click here to view the catalogue

About

Exhibition opened by Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery.

Portraits took six portraits from Tanya Raabe's Who'S WhO series of works and placed them alongside work by the people she paints. Each artist portrayed has been chosen because of their influence in shaping disability art as an arts movement and by placing their own work next to their portraits we aimed to give some context to what they do or did for the movement.

Combining oil painting and multimedia portraits, Who'S WhO allowed Tanya to challenge the traditional notion of portraiture using her experience and knowledge of the Disability Arts world.

Works chosen for the 'Portraits' exhibition included paintings of and work by: Dr Paul Darke, Mat Fraser, Colin Hambrook, Julie McNamara, Allan Sutherland and Shape's own Chief Executive Tony Heaton.

Sandy said "Portraiture is a creative field in which images of ourselves and others are defined by artists and photographers. This is a fascinating exhibition which extends the idea of the portrait in the context of the Disability Arts Movement".

Tanya's work introduces us to some of the trail blazers of the Disability Arts Movement, and gives us the opportunity to better understand the Movement's role in the wider Disability Rights struggle. It's a celebration of an important, if often overlooked, artistic history".

Curated by Kate Larsen and Ben Fredericks