Faces: A Primordial Form

Our minds distinguish people from one to the next by their faces. Our cognition recognises a face and connects our memories to that person. Other body parts are filed as less important associations with that person. Through Millennia, artists within various tribes in Ancient culture have used the face in depicting the importance of a person. A face is central to distinguishing a tribe leader or King. The profile of a face has a rich history throughout Mespotoamia, Roman, Greek and Egyptian civilisation, where in ancient China the profile of the religious icon, Gautam Buddha, is always frontal and eyes either closed or semi-closed to portray deep meditation. Francis Bacon's portraits are in a trajectory state of flux and tar ambiguous fragments of time as the faces in his portraits look skewed or like gravity is tugging on them. One body of work of his, the Velazques's portraits are so powerful. They are less on the trajectory of time and more about using the human face to express emotion his screaming Pope Innocent X, painted up to 43 times, are never forgotten once seen and will remain timeless in Contemporary society. George Condo's faces also transcend the trajectory of time, some in a cubist manner of stylising a multitude of various views of the same face. Other works by Condo are cartoon – like and over emphasise attributes of the person, like; their nose varied to a minutely scaled down pinhead to elongated necks. This exhibition will feature art from artists who paint, draw, print, sculpt. Photograph faces. Their depictions of a face can be obscure to realist. There may be only a mouth or an ear used , but if effectively to transmit emotion they will be selected. There will be an essay that will discover the history of the face from ancient civilisations to modern contemporaries to accompany this exhibition..

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Exgiovane
Michael Hayter
Rhiannon Rebecca Salisbury
David L. Scholes
Czar Catstick
Anne-Maria Tsagurnis
Madgalena Ana Rosso
Patrick Vandecasteele
Emma Tingård