Bringing together emerging artists from London and New York City, two art meccas and one long tradition: portraiture. Historically, British artists have been surveyed in the United States and American artists have been presented in the UK. This exhibition brings together artists from both cities whose work discusses the idea of identity – specifically through the use of portraiture – in its widest interpretation. This is an opportunity to compare and contrast ideas and images from both artistic capitals. Approximately 25 artists are presented working in various media including painting, sculpture, video, drawing, photography, installation, and alternative media.

ARTISTS:

Christina Niederberger creates whimsical images of animals using trimmed faux fur to parody the old European style of portraiture. Alison O’Daniel makes videos that alter the established role of viewer and viewed in the context of voyeurism. Davy Lauterbach and Matthew Nastuk bring their experience working with the `Simpsons’ in new and surprising directions – Nastuk with his almost repetitive drawings of groups often mundane individuals and Lauterbach in his re-worked paintings of high portraiture. Todd Ayoung and Carlos Andrade collaborate on photo installations juxtaposing portraits of famous and infamous individuals with very odd results. Naglaa Walker (winner of a Jerwood Photography Award in 2003) presents photo portraits that are non-literal and intuitive investigations of the rituals of science and human interaction. As well, photographers Marc McAndrews, Charles Cohen, and Mark Cremer all strive to reinterpret the traditional approach to what constitutes portrait photography or established norms of representation. Lili Maya utilizes her own body and photo-collage to transform the language of the female nude in her studies of the human condition. Adrian Di Duca’s sculptures of children’s toys are presented in a sardonic display of the strangeness of identity. Hendrika Sonnenberg and Chris Hanson work together to recreate overlooked and seemingly pedestrian items associated with certain places and times – completely produced in material that is at once delicate and anathema to the subjects rendered. John Gordon Gauld creates detailed and realistic paintings using strange objects and figurines to invert viewer preconceptions of a traditional aesthetic – exposing the transcendental and internal in objects both commonplace and extraordinary. Equally, Mark Gagnon and Karim Hamid bring to their paintings a unique view of portraiture – Gagnon in a humourous and ironic tableau of images associated with certain celebrities and Hamid in his striking paintings of otherwise passive arrangements of people. Django Voris and Neil Chamberlain create, together, video installations that follow a parallel world inhabited by strange beings and oddly arranged scenarios that shadow our own world of perceived actions. In the video installation of Rafael Attias nostalgia and melancholy rule his arrangement of moving images projected onto weather balloons. Alternatively, the collaborative group calling themselves fauna fabricator transform found imagery and sound and produce an installation set to question our earliest notions of the ideal identity. Jenny Baines and Hye Yeon Nam, working separately in video, both imagine identity on the fringe of self-reflection and public appearance – with strange consequences. John Grande regards everything plastic, tragic, and political in his paintings juxtaposing sometime opposing imagery. While Sarah Cline and Samantha Smith create playful and biting renditions of portraiture both public and private in their separate bodies of sculptural work.