Viewing Figures

Exploring the person and process behind the picture plane, Uncanny Likeness is a group exhibition of portraiture at OVADA by five artists at various stages in their careers.

Capturing likeness can be one of the most difficult tasks for an artist, especially if the subject is known to the artist; an accomplished draftsman can recreate physical resemblance, but it takes a more exploratory, considered, and perhaps conceptual approach to really represent the person and encapsulate a personality.

From contemplative oils to animated paintings, each artist in this exhibition reveals shared concerns about the concept of identity and challenges pre-conceived ideas about the portrait.

Peter Monkman, winner of this year’s prestigious BP National Portrait Award, lays bare a magical, firefly innocence and the curious, wide-eyed imagination of his 12-year-old daughter, Anna, in his portraits Changeling 1 and Changeling 2. Monkman displays an obvious understanding of his subject, and incredibly articulate paint-handling. He says: “I challenge the fixed notion of an idealised image of childhood and substitute it for a more unsettling, complex representation that exists in its own right as a painting.”

Gideon Pain’s work with its graphic yet painterly style, described as haunting, unsettling and ultimately emotional, unearths the adult within the child.

His subjects appear grown-up, and knowing, somehow conscious of the presence of the viewer standing before them.

Pain’s paint handling, reminiscent of that of Mona Hatoum, is raw and transparent, the thinly applied layers revealing the vulnerability of the subject.

Interestingly, Pain’s work doesn’t represent singular events but fragments of some on-going, unknown narrative.

The artist acknowledges the loss of time in his work and in doing so he explores the possibilities that memory offers and the variant stories that recollections have the power to produce.

Oxford-based artist, Adam J Maynard, currently OVADA’s artist in residence, has created an exciting new body of work entitled ‘I just need some time off to eat ice-cream and look at rainbows’.

On the surface this series of 14 paintings conveys a sense of humour and absurdity, yet it is underpinned by a very definite dark feeling of unease.

Using found photographs from bygone eras Maynard releases the uncomfortable histories buried deep beneath the surface of the family unit.

Like Maynard, Emma Cousin works from found images and old photographs. Intrigued by truth laced with deception that she identifies in the ‘foreign’ images that she selects to work with, the mystery behind these images allow Cousin to paint people not as they actually are, but how they might be.

The paintings produced by this emerging artist, reflect an intense observation of the surrounding world and the unsettling undertones of insecurities that ring under the surface of the image and resound in her work through the energetic, sculptural paint application and expressionistic style that make her subjects so very tangible.

Taking a more experimental approach to portraiture, recent Oxford Brookes graduate, Olivia Franklin, experiments with literal translations of movement, culminating in a body of figurative painted animations. Franklin’s works demonstrate the relevance of painting in an increasingly conceptual art world.

The animation highlights notions of illusion and space, in doing so challenging the perception of the portrait.

An intriguing and utterly enjoyable exhibition illustrating the vitality of contemporary portrait painting for anyone with any interest in art, portraiture or people.

FACT FILE: * The exhibition continues until March 21, 2010 * Artists Include: Peter Monkman, Adam J Maynard, Gideon Pain, Emma Cousin, Olivia Franklin * Contact 01865 201782 or info@ovada.org.uk ovada.org.uk * OVADA opening times: Tuesday to Friday 10am- 5pm; Saturday 11am-4pm, closed Sundays and Mondays; Admission is free.

Address: 21 Gloucester Green, Oxford, OX1 2AQ.