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Five2Watch: Portraits


In response to our Digital Resident Jaron Hill we’ve selected five artists who have explored portraiture within their work: Martin Seeds, Roy Mehta, Ingrid Berthon-Moine, John Paul Evans and Ernesto Romano.


No Country For Young Men, 2020

Martin Seeds

Appropriated from a Belfast School Year book circa 1965-66, these portraits depict youths on the cusp of adulthood during a time of great upheaval in the province.

Martin Seeds

 

The Harlesden & Willesden archive, 1989 - 1993

Roy Mehta

Title: A celebration of community on the streets of Harlesden, NW London c. 1989

Description: This image is from my new photobook about NW London, published by Hoxton Mini Press. 
They consist of tender photographs of the Afro-Carribbean and Irish communities in west London in the early 90s. 
The book has a foreword by Dr Mark Sealy and Introduction by Caryl Phillips 
Published 2021 Hoxton Mini Press £25 Hardback

 

Roy Mehta

 

Rouge Star, 2009

Ingrid Berthon-Moine

“Red is The Colour” is a series of 12 portraits of women wearing their menstrual blood as lipstick. This body of work explores the phenomenon of menstrue and the taboo attached to it, by researching the origins of make-up. Whilst in Western society menstrual blood is considered a taboo, ancient tribes like the Dieri and other Australian tribes venerated it and by applying it on or around the mouth to signal the arrival of menstruation, made lipstick one of the first cosmetics. Each woman is identified with the name of a lipstick commonly found at beauty counters. It creates an ironic link with the beauty industry and underlines that the semiotics used in naming lipsticks may, inadvertently be related to menstruation.

By creating an intimacy that is frightening and that we would rather not share, the images challenge our fears and exploit our unconscious and perverse fascination for the abject.

 

'till death us do part’, 2013

John Paul Evans

Performed portraits exploring permutations of the wedding portrait.

 

 

Alter Ego, 2009

Ernesto Romano

Alter Ego is the artwork that gives name to a project where I use my own X-Rays to create intimate self portraits where flowers and foliage appear like in a dream like state to reveal the artist's unconscious life

edition of 25 available unframed or mounted on foamex/framed
C-type print gloss 53 x 40 cm

bigger edition available of 3+2AP:
93 x 70 cm lambda print mounted of dibond with perspex face

 

Ernesto Romano

 

  

Published 4 June 2021

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