Findings - Week 12
BP Portrait Award 2020 and The Barber Shop Chronicles
One of my aim for 2020 is to be more conscious of the time I spend reading/listening/watching new (to me) creative projects. I want to actively make time for other people’s work and creativity in my life. One way of achieving this has been to be more focused with my time but as the year gets busier, I am going to to lose that focus. To combat this, I am going to publicly share a list of works I’ve been enjoying on a weekly basis.
BP Portrait Award 2020
I have only recently developed an interest in portraiture and what better place to explore the genre than the National Portrait Gallery. I have visited it many times, returning often for its temporary exhibitions, but not this year. As Covid-19 keeps the doors of museums shut, we cannot contemplate art in person.
So second best is the Internet, and the National Portrait Gallery is doing a good job at it. They have create an online tour for the BP Portrait Award 2020. Each year this award is aimed event aimed at encouraging artists to focus on and develop the theme of portraiture in their work. Many of the selected portraits are hyper realist in this year selection, every details painstakingly applied to the canvas. Seen through a screen, the paintings appear photographic like.
I spent an enjoyable morning ‘visiting’ the exhibition. While it was a pleasant experience, I cannot deny that I missed being able to see the textures, to feel the sizes of the paintings, and to let them wash over me. That will have to wait. For now, you too can get a taste for the selected portraits here.
Inua Ellams – Barber Shop Chronicles
Every Thursday, the National Theatre, airs a play on YouTube and week was Barber Shop Chronicles.
The play takes us through barber shops from Europe to Africa where African men gather. We are a fly on the wall of those barber shops. We listen to the lives of the men on stage, the shop morphing into a confessional, living room, political stage, refuge, and anything else the people who walk in may need.
Lightly written, the play never cast a judgment on the opinion expressed. We are presented with different lives and experiences, all valid, all needing no justification, all safe while they are in the space of the barber shop.
I highly recommend Adeline Rapon’s photos (https://www.instagram.com/adelinerapon/) during le confinement during which she recreated each day a photo or a painting of a woman from les Antilles with an explanation of the context of the original photos. Very informative and beautiful.
Thanks a lot for pointing this series of photos out 🙂
I’ve just spent a good chunk of time exploring them. It is astonishing how little I know about these women, their histories, and the lives.
Same for me. Which made me even more grateful to have people taking the time to educate me. When it’s as beautiful and artistic as this, it’s even more of a pleasure.