"About Face: Contemporary Portraiture and Painting"
2006-07-19 until 2006-08-12
Bell-Roberts Art Gallery
Cape Town, , ZA South Africa

Bell-Roberts gallery is proud to host About Face, an exhibition inspired by the global resurgence of portraiture and painting. Of all the art genres portrait painting is, arguably, the most loaded. Through the centuries it has been about “fixing” the face, capturing likeness, immortalising the aging and providing a public glimpse of a private life. In ‘About Face’, the portrait has become the gateway to the exploration of the relationship between identity, consumption, commerce, mass media, and contemporary culture.

Celebrated South African artists Cameron Platter, Nigel Mullins, Norman O’Flynn, Paul du Toit, Sanell Aggenbach and Tanya Poole were invited to use the genre both as a form of self and societal reflection.  

From the frivolous and potentially disjunctive practices of consumerism to the nostalgic celebration of history and tradition the exhibiting artists explore and interrogate that most hallowed, sometimes hollow, of genres. The result is a provocative “face-off”.

IMAGE
Nigel Mullins
Pacifier III
Oil on Canvas

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for South Africa

Other Important Exhibitions in South Africa