The self-portrait or ‘selfie’ has become a way of creating an identity, a method of making-up, sharing and publishing our self or ‘selves.’  But who are these portraits for, what do they communicate and say about the self and identity more generally? 

Drawing on original portraits by artists as diverse as Artemisia Gentiles, Adrian Piper, Robert Mapplethorpe and Linder Sterling, the works in this exhibition explore and intervene in the history of portraiture, identifying and addressing exclusions by interrogating visibility and the very notion of an authentic self. The artists in this exhibition are not content to depict and represent what we know, rather they are inclined toward the unknown, the experimental. They provoke and question identity, creatively interrogating not only the self but how we make-up our other selfies.

Sebastiane Hegarty

Senior Lecturer