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2573 Face to Face Autumn:A4 6/8/09 12:36 Page 1 Face to Face AUTUMN 2009 My Favourite Portrait by Camila Batmanghelidjh Beatles to Bowie: the 60s exposed John Gibbons: Portraits 2573 Face to Face Autumn:A4 6/8/09 12:36 Page 2 From the Director In this issue of Face to Face, we are delighted that Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder of the special charity the Kids Company, has chosen her favourite portrait from the Gallery’s Collection. This comes after the unveiling of a special commissioned portrait of Camila undertaken by Dean Marsh, winner of the BP Portrait Award in 2005, and currently on display in Room 40 in the Lerner Galleries. With the opening of the successful Gay Icons exhibition (on show until 18 October), I am pleased that three of the selectors – Ben Summerskill, Lord Waheed Alli and Jackie Kay – have chosen to talk about their personal experiences of being involved with the exhibition. In October, the Gallery opens Beatles to Bowie: the 60s exposed. This major photographic ABOVE exhibition will feature over 150 images from the 1960s including rare portraits of The Cliff Richard Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and The Rolling Stones – with more than 100 prints by Cornel Lucas, 1960 exhibited for the first time. This exhibition will document the critical role that music © Cornel Lucas had on the formation of internationally acknowledged ‘Swinging London’ as well as the This work will feature in Beatles broader development of culture and society in Britain. The exhibition also charts the to Bowie: the 60s exposed on progress of fashion and the cross-over into design and the new world of pop magazines. display in the Wolfson and Lerner Galleries from 15 October 2009. Elsewhere in the Gallery, a fascinating display looks at the varied career of prominent British cultural icon Twiggy, linked with a new publication from the Gallery. Also, we feature the first ever display of abstract artist John Gibbons’s sculptural portraits. These works have been informed greatly by the cultural heritage of Western Ireland and by his relationship with his son. Comedians: From the 1940s to Now is currently on tour and will be displayed next at the Plymouth City Art Gallery and then in Sheffield. In each region where the display is hung the selection of works changes to reflect the area, highlighting not only the regional changes in comic entertainers, but the transition from the music hall and radio to TV and modern stages. Finally, continuing the Gallery’s work with teenagers, the exciting project Chasing Mirrors is soon to be on display in the Studio Gallery, and is the first part of a three-year project supported by the John Lyon’s Charity. The contemporary artist Faisal Abdu’Allah has been working with young people in Brent, Barnet and Ealing, looking into the difficult issues they face surrounding stereotypes, culture and faith both within their communities and nationally. Sandy Nairne DIRECTOR 2573 Face to Face Autumn P3:A4 6/8/09 12:33 Page 1 Camila Batmanghelidjh, who We live in a culture where people show ‘face’, MY FAVOURITE trained as a psychotherapist, presenting a public presence where failures are denied PORTRAIT is the founder of two for fear of not being chosen. Much of the human children’s charities – The condition is about trial, error and the murky space of CAMILA Place 2 Be (now national) and Kids Company where she emotional fragility. To deny shadowed parts of the self BATMANGHELIDJH currently works with some is to deny a profound sense of beauty and truth. of the most traumatised young people. This portrait reminds me of the abandoned young people Kids Company works with. Face to face with Kids Company was set up the public, they are feared and despised. Turned away in 1996 and reaches 13,500 from negative scrutiny, the extraordinary dignity of children a year with therapeutic and social work children surviving abuse illuminates. support. Camila and her team Annually some 550,000 children are referred to have raised £50 million over child protection services, but only some 33,000 are the years to help London’s most vulnerable children. registered for help. To lower costs, some 30,000 are de-registered within the year. Exceptionally vulnerable children live in the underbelly of our cities, invisible LEFT In portraits, face to face, normally the subject and the to the civil process; they are unable to command Samuel Barclay Beckett onlooker lock gaze. So it was a surprise to be greeted attention because they do not vote. With no power to by Tom Phillips, 1984 by the back of Samuel Beckett’s head. It is arresting hold anyone accountable for a safer childhood, they © DACS / Tom Phillips in the stillness: regal and humble combined. Grey and protest. Reflecting back our disturbance, we punish sepia tones invite viewers into a reflective space. and blame them. Much of our day is encountering shadows, individuals We failed them, they fail, and yet they try again, walking past, surviving the margins of society. The in hope that we’ll do better. human being that Beckett is staring at represents Honesty demands that we face inward, scrutinising a frozen moment tight-roping between hope and our own choices rather than lock gaze with pretence. despair. The message is so poignant: ‘No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’ When facing the dark, there is courage for light. TWO IMPORTANT NEWLY acquired collections of Scientists photographed by Corbin and O’Grady SCIENCE IN photographs of scientists form the basis of this include Robert Edwards, pioneer of in vitro fertilisation, FOCUS display: nine colour portraits by Anita Corbin and John taken at Bourn Hall Clinic; Nobel Prize winner Antony O’Grady, and eight black and white portraits by Hewish, at Mullard Radio Observatory, University PORTRAITS OF Anne-Katrin Purkiss. of Cambridge; and physicist Michael Boris Green, SCIENTISTS a pioneer of string theory. Anita Corbin and John O’Grady have been working as 26 August 2009– portrait photographers since the early 1980s, both as Anne-Katrin Purkiss graduated from Leipzig University January 2010 individuals and as a team under the title Corbin with a degree in photography and journalism in 1983. O’Grady Studio. Between 1983 and 1993 they worked She moved to England in 1984, working for four years Room 38a on assignment with the Sunday Times Magazine and at Associated Press, before becoming a freelance the Observer Magazine creating portraits for their photographer. Her commissions include regular work feature stories. Their portraits are a selection from a for government departments and agencies such as series of twenty-four photographs taken in 1989 and the Countryside Agency. commissioned by the British Council. Each portrait Purkiss’s portraits include Sir Timothy Hunt, Principal FROM LEFT shows the sitter with a background relevant to their Scientist, for Cancer Research UK; surgeon Ara Warkes Antony Hewish from the series pioneering work. Anita Corbin recalls her sessions with Darzi, Baron Darzi of Denham, and Frances Mary Science in Profile each sitter: ‘They were all absolutely passionate about by Anita Corbin and John O’Grady, Ashcroft, Professor of Physiology. their subjects and we enjoyed rising to the challenge 1989 to capture that passion in their pictures.’ Helen Trompeteler Sir Timothy Hunt ASSISTANT CURATOR OF PHOTOGRAPHS by Anne-Katrin Purkiss, May 2008 2573 Face to Face Autumn:A4 6/8/09 12:37 Page 4 BEATLES TO BOWIE THE 60S EXPOSED 15 October 2009– 24 January 2010 Wolfson and Ground Floor Lerner Galleries Admission charge Sponsored by The Bank of New York Mellon RIGHT The Beatles (Ringo Starr, George Harrison, Paul McCartney, John Lennon) by Robert Whitaker, 1965 Robert Whitaker Archive © Robert Whitaker PHOTOGRAPHY, POP MUSIC, FILM and fashion as the world’s most important capital of innovation coalesced in 1960s London to produce a remarkable and creativity, as defined by pop culture. visual and aural legacy that still resonates and The exhibition is arranged chronologically in ten impacts on contemporary life. sections, covering each year of the 1960s, and Perfectly timed to mark the fortieth anniversary of primarily focuses on those artists whose records, David Bowie’s first Top Ten record, Space Oddity, performances, looks and music made them the which marked the first Moon landings, the exhibition leading icons of the time. Crucial structures of the pop will run through to January 2010, thus also marking scene were enhanced by the worlds of fashion, film the fiftieth anniversary of the start of the 1960s, which and photography, and there are overlapping images became the decade of The Beatles. It was at the end of pop stars photographed with fashion models of 1960 that the group, who had experimented with a or appearing in films and advertising. Key moments number of other names, finally settled on The Beatles. from these areas are included in the visual mix. This exhibition is focused on a collection of over 150 Early pop highlights include hit groups and artists from photographs, two thirds of which have not previously Johnny Kidd, photographed in full piratical gear by been exhibited. In addition, these are put into context Angus McBean and remembered for his pop classic by highly collectable pop ephemera such as album Shakin’ All Over, to the John Barry Seven whose sleeves, illustrated sheet music of the hit songs of the signature Hit or Miss provided the introductory theme time and the magazines that chronicled pop in to Juke Box Jury, one of the many programmes on TV the era. Fabulous, Rave, Queen, Vogue, Record Mirror, (others were Thank Your Lucky Stars and Ready Steady NME, Merseybeat, Disc, Music Echo and many others Go) that brought the new pop to the wider public.

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