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Hello everyone,
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and welcome to 15 Minutes of Frame,
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our cross continental conversation series
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that brings together the staff
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of the national portrait galleries from around the world.
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We're going to go behind the scenes,
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get to know what makes them tick,
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and we have a fantastic lineup today
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of panelists from Scotland, New Zealand and Australia
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and a terrific topic.
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So we're going to kick off with our conversation shortly.
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This evening, I am broadcasting from the beautiful countries
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of the Ngambri and the Ngunawa peoples
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and I'd like to pay my respect to their elders
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past, present and emerging,
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and I'd like to extend that same respect
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to any of the lands on which you're coming to us from today.
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My name is Gill Raymond,
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and I'm going to be the host of the conversation today.
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We like to make all of our virtual programs here
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at the National Portrait Gallery in Australia
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extremely interactive, so if you would like to ask
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a question about panelists this evening,
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please pop it into the chat or the Q and A function in Zoom
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or into the chat function
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if you're joining us live on Facebook.
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All right, let's meet our panelists.
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Joining us bright and early from Edinburgh
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is Christopher Baker.
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He is the director of the European and Scottish
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Art and Portraiture at the National Gallery of Scotland.
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Paul Johnson is a curator at Te Pukenga Whakaata,
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New Zealand's National Portrait Gallery,
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and I do apologise if I've mangled that pronunciation
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and Joanna Gilmour is our very own curator of collection
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and research here at the National Portrait Gallery
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in Canberra, Australia.
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Now, the topic that we've selected
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for their conversation today is a meaty one.
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We've chosen power and portraiture.
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And what a can of worms we're about to open this evening,
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and this morning, if you're coming to us from overseas.
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There's so much to unpack in this topic.
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Not least of all is the fact that portrait galleries
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themselves are very much embedded in
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and came from, were born from particular power structures.
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So let me throw over to Jo
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and she'll kick off the conversation.
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Here we are.
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Can you guys both hear me?
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It's good.
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Great.
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Well, hello to you both.
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Good morning to you, Paul.
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Sorry, good evening to you, Paul.
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And good morning to you, Christopher.
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You really drew the short straw
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in having to get up at quarter past six in the morning
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in Edinburgh to tune in to join us for this conversation.
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It's lovely to be with you,
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so no problem.
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Great, and we're really sort of looking forward
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to having this conversation,
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although as Gill has sort of warned us,
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I think it could be potentially a bit of a can of worms.
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But what I thought we'd do this evening
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is sort of based on that kind of warm up conversation
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that we had a few weeks ago.
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I've kind of pulled out a few sort of meaty themes
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that I thought we could get started with
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if you like, and then we can sort of take it in
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whatever direction that it chooses to go in
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and the other thing that Gill mentioned in her intro
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is that sort of thing that sort of I think
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came through very strongly from our conversation
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a few weeks ago, was that idea of,
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you know, colonial legacies
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and it's always been of interest to me
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that there are very, very few national portrait galleries
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in the world and the bulk of them that exist
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are in places that are English speaking countries
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and also places that have a British colonial history,
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so Australia-New Zealand, the United States
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being the two that I'm thinking of in that sort of context
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and that's always really intrigued me.
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And I was wondering if you wanted to sort of,
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if you wanted to say something about your feelings
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about that sort of that characteristic
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of portrait galleries.
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What is it about sort of British colonial origins
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that makes us want to sort of stake our claim in this way
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and discover our identity and record our identity
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in this way?
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I'll throw that to you Paul first, if you like.
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Sure.
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I mean, one of the things that's interesting
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about the New Zealand Portrait Gallery
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is that unlike the two galleries
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where you two are coming from,
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we are very much a kind of private nonprofit initiative
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that was kind of founded by just one woman
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who decided that New Zealand
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ought to have a portrait gallery.
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And I think that probably says something
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about kind of New Zealand being this country that is,
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has this very or at least used to have
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a very British centred sense of national identity.
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And I think this is where, you know,
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even conceiving of the idea that this is an institution,
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a country ought to have by a private individual
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speaks to her existing
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in this kind of Anglocentric British world, I guess.
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Yeah.
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I know your gallery has a very different history,
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Christ, which may be good.
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Absolutely.
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So I think it's a really interesting point
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that you raised about the fact
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that national portrait gallery are confined in many ways
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to the English speaking world
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and I think it's partly because of their history
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and the way in which they grew up in the 19th century,
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very different world from the one we have now
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and there was strong motivations then,
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which perhaps we're very uncomfortable with now
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but we need to recognise that that was the context
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to do with nationhood, to do with education,
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and actually in the Scottish context,
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there's a remarkable man called Carlyle
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who you're probably familiar with,
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great historian in the 19th century.
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He had a very simple but incredibly powerful ideas.
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As he saw it, if you wanted to understand history
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you needed to see the faces of the people
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who've made history,
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which is a very, very powerful motivation
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and I think it does connect with colonialism
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just as you've rightly imply, but a lot of other forces
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that came to bear in the 19th century.
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And I have to say happily, of course and rightly,
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we've moved way beyond that,
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so there is obviously now something quite different,
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inclusive, open, not hierarchical at all,
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and that's as it should be, but that history is interesting
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and indeed important to be aware of.
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Yes, and it always intrigued me,
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I think, is that, you know, Thomas Carlyle
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of course is one of the sort of driving forces
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behind the foundation of the portrait gallery
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in London in 1856.
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And I affectionately referred to NPG London
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as the mothership and I still do
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and even while acknowledging
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all of that very problematic history
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and those sort of uncomfortable elements of our origins.
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It's always really interesting to me
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how much of Carlyle's sort of original concept
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about learning about history through,
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learning history as refracted through individual lives
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and representations of individuals
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and learning through biographies,
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how that still very much resonates with me
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working here a long time after Carlyle
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was promoting his ideas and the sort of concepts
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behind the foundation of NPG London in the 1850s.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely. Absolutely.
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The other strand of this, of course though,
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is that portrait galleries thrive
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in an environment where the art of portraiture
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in all its different forms is lively.
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And there's sort of many artists who were excited
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about that challenge as well.
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So there is the political dimension,
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but very importantly the artistic dimension too
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to all of this, I think, which is fascinating.
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And I think some would argue too that,
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or certainly speaking here about the Australian context,
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that sort of idea,
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actually, could we have a look at one of my slides,
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Robert, which is, it's just a quote.
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So it's the only one of my slides
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that hasn't got any images on it.
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I'm not sure whether Christopher and Paul
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are familiar with this quote
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but it's the British painter, Benjamin Robert Hayden
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and it's a quote that I often come back to
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in sort of thinking about Australian portraiture
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specifically I guess, because I think one of the perceptions
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of portraiture is that,
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and this is something that I kind of grapple with
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all the time, is that it's not real art.
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You know, it's just something that a lot of artists did
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and this is certainly the case
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in the Australian colonial context.
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It's a lot of stuff that was made simply
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because artists were out here and portraiture was a way
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you could make a living,
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19th century Australia particularly,
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up until, you know pretty much up until federation.
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It was very much a sort of, middle-class
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kind of provincial society,
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a very sort of opportunistic society.
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A lot of people who are out here
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A, because they didn't have any choice about being out here
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or who came out here because they saw it as a place
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of opportunity, aspirational sort of clientele, I suppose.
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So it was very, was ripe.
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Ripe territory for portrait painters.
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And I think just also to bring this in here as well
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is that other sort of very much closely related factor
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and another thing that sort of came out of our conversation,
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that we had a few weeks ago to get this program happening
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was once again, I think a point that you made Christopher
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about the implications of portrait collecting
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and specifically the assumption that by collecting
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and displaying portraits, national portrait galleries
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are supposedly shaping or perpetuating concepts
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of who is powerful and important and worthy of respect,
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and also shaping concepts of what type of portraits,
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what type of object are most worthy
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or most appropriate in that context.
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And I know Paul, you've just, if it hasn't finished already,
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you've worked on an exhibition,
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which is just about to finish,
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which is on that very sort of question,
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that notion of portraits as power,
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as a form of perpetuating and disseminating ideas
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about power and influence.
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Do you want to tell us a little bit about that exhibition
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and maybe about some of the works that you featured in it?
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Yeah, absolutely.
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And if anyone here is in Wellington,
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it will be open until this Sunday.
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So you still have a few days left, but not very many.
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And maybe we could start with this image of a single coin
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from my sides, because I think this is something
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I think is quite important as context.
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Yeah, so this is sort of arguably the very first kind
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of realistic portrait in the Western tradition.
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And it's a portrait of Alexander the Great
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and like a big part of the reason
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that everyone knows who Alexander the Great is, even today,
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is precisely because he was this first person
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who caught onto this idea
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that he could kind of commission people
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to make reproductions of his face
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that actually looked like him
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and distributed them widely across the world.
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So this coin wasn't even made by Alexander the Great.
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It was made by one of his successor kings
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who took over his kingdom, his empire after he died,
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and this guy, Seleucus,
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is still making coins with Alexander's face on them
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because this is a way to lay claim to his legacy.
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And so I think thinking about currency in particular
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is a really interesting kind of way into
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the kind of ways that portraiture kind of
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very kind of in a very material way manifests power.
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This is how you know your money is legitimate
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even to this day, is that it has a picture
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and all the places that we live in, a picture of the Queen.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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It's the power of, I suppose,
266
00:13:17.690 --> 00:13:20.400
reproduction makes a portrait more powerful, doesn't it,
267
00:13:20.400 --> 00:13:25.400
duplication, and it's so interesting seeing coinage.
268
00:13:26.440 --> 00:13:28.010
I think we tend to forget it wrongly,
269
00:13:28.010 --> 00:13:29.680
forget about coinage and metals,
270
00:13:29.680 --> 00:13:32.120
and when we're thinking about portraiture,
271
00:13:32.120 --> 00:13:34.943
but they're fundamental and global as well, actually.
272
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And I'm struck by the fact that at the moment
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most of us are not using much physical money
274
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actually for obvious reasons,
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so that power has actually diminished a bit right now.
276
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It is so interesting and it's to do with,
277
00:13:55.200 --> 00:13:56.690
so this is a very simple way of putting it,
278
00:13:56.690 --> 00:13:58.800
but in some ways, endorsements I think actually.
279
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Endorsement of power.
280
00:13:59.780 --> 00:14:03.240
So just as, you know, if a portrait
281
00:14:03.240 --> 00:14:05.580
enters the national portrait gallery, to a degree,
282
00:14:05.580 --> 00:14:07.890
that is some level of endorsement
283
00:14:07.890 --> 00:14:11.250
but also having the head of,
284
00:14:11.250 --> 00:14:13.830
incredibly important head of state, let's put it like that,
285
00:14:13.830 --> 00:14:16.920
on a client or a metal or a bank note,
286
00:14:16.920 --> 00:14:21.340
it's solidifying and duplicating that power.
287
00:14:21.340 --> 00:14:22.988
Isn't it really?
288
00:14:22.988 --> 00:14:23.875
Hmm.
289
00:14:23.875 --> 00:14:26.701
And you had some observations about Robert Burns
290
00:14:26.701 --> 00:14:30.180
in relation to that question of the reproduction of
291
00:14:30.180 --> 00:14:33.060
and dissemination of images.
292
00:14:33.060 --> 00:14:33.893
That's right.
293
00:14:33.893 --> 00:14:37.760
Could we, thank you, could we kind of look at the image
294
00:14:37.760 --> 00:14:41.130
of Burns that's in the Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh
295
00:14:41.130 --> 00:14:45.870
which is by an artist called Alexander Nasmyth.
296
00:14:45.870 --> 00:14:47.147
Thank you.
297
00:14:47.147 --> 00:14:48.150
There it is.
298
00:14:48.150 --> 00:14:48.983
That's great.
299
00:14:48.983 --> 00:14:53.859
So this is a late 18th century portrait from the life.
300
00:14:53.859 --> 00:14:56.820
This is Robert Burns, the national poet,
301
00:14:56.820 --> 00:14:58.930
the great Bard of Scotland,
302
00:14:58.930 --> 00:15:02.020
actually painted by a friend of his, Alexander Nasmyth.
303
00:15:02.020 --> 00:15:04.440
And from the outset, this was intended
304
00:15:04.440 --> 00:15:06.780
to be reproduced and duplicated.
305
00:15:06.780 --> 00:15:09.560
It was actually engraved as a print
306
00:15:09.560 --> 00:15:13.430
in an early edition of the poet's poetry.
307
00:15:13.430 --> 00:15:17.660
However, it's taken on another life, many other lives,
308
00:15:17.660 --> 00:15:20.640
because since then, it's been reproduced millions of times
309
00:15:20.640 --> 00:15:25.580
on souvenirs, in all sorts of media.
310
00:15:25.580 --> 00:15:30.100
And this small, modest although very attractive painting
311
00:15:30.100 --> 00:15:32.900
has become an icon way beyond
312
00:15:32.900 --> 00:15:36.380
its original circumstances of creation
313
00:15:36.380 --> 00:15:39.730
through reproduction essentially.
314
00:15:39.730 --> 00:15:42.580
And it's become much more powerful
315
00:15:42.580 --> 00:15:46.130
than I think could ever have been originally anticipated,
316
00:15:46.130 --> 00:15:49.220
that's what I'd suggest, through that process.
317
00:15:49.220 --> 00:15:54.220
Mm. And Burns is someone, I mean I guess,
318
00:15:54.334 --> 00:15:57.451
an Australian or equivalent for us,
319
00:15:57.451 --> 00:15:59.210
in terms of the Portrait Gallery's collection
320
00:15:59.210 --> 00:16:00.930
would be someone like Queen Victoria.
321
00:16:00.930 --> 00:16:02.900
Actually, we've got an image of Queen Victoria
322
00:16:02.900 --> 00:16:04.173
I think somewhere.
323
00:16:05.330 --> 00:16:10.330
And, you know, Queen Victoria is someone who never ventured
324
00:16:10.330 --> 00:16:15.330
to Australia, yet she is inescapable here.
325
00:16:15.610 --> 00:16:17.990
There is so much of this country,
326
00:16:17.990 --> 00:16:22.020
yeah, that's a wonderful little carte de visite from 1860
327
00:16:22.020 --> 00:16:24.830
which is on the left-hand side of the screen.
328
00:16:24.830 --> 00:16:29.830
So I guess this is, not that you would know it
329
00:16:30.380 --> 00:16:32.910
from this image, she looks like just any other
330
00:16:32.910 --> 00:16:36.930
sort of middle-class respectable wife and mother,
331
00:16:36.930 --> 00:16:38.300
but at the point that this has taken,
332
00:16:38.300 --> 00:16:43.060
she is possibly the most powerful person on the planet
333
00:16:43.060 --> 00:16:48.060
with countless hectares of territory under her control
334
00:16:49.070 --> 00:16:52.990
and millions and millions of people sort of for whom
335
00:16:52.990 --> 00:16:56.280
she was the sovereign and what,
336
00:16:56.280 --> 00:16:58.818
I mean, I'm fascinated with cartes de visite
337
00:16:58.818 --> 00:17:01.620
for all sorts of reasons.
338
00:17:01.620 --> 00:17:04.470
I've paired her with the lady on the right,
339
00:17:04.470 --> 00:17:06.500
who was a woman named Marie Sibly,
340
00:17:06.500 --> 00:17:10.685
who was a traveling phrenologist and hypnotist
341
00:17:10.685 --> 00:17:14.160
who worked on the Goldfields in Victoria
342
00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:16.180
and also in New South Wales a little bit
343
00:17:16.180 --> 00:17:17.990
in the 1860s and 1970s
344
00:17:17.990 --> 00:17:21.740
and I've paired the Monarch with this, you know,
345
00:17:21.740 --> 00:17:25.580
rather kind of a spurious show woman
346
00:17:25.580 --> 00:17:29.220
just sort of to demonstrate the, you know,
347
00:17:29.220 --> 00:17:31.857
the kind of scope of the portrait gallery's collection
348
00:17:31.857 --> 00:17:34.460
and that whereas there might be this conception
349
00:17:34.460 --> 00:17:37.910
that national portrait galleries only collect images
350
00:17:37.910 --> 00:17:41.540
of household names and people who were very distinguished
351
00:17:41.540 --> 00:17:43.760
or very powerful or very beautiful or very important
352
00:17:43.760 --> 00:17:46.826
or very historically significant in some way.
353
00:17:46.826 --> 00:17:51.240
What we're very much doing in building a collection here
354
00:17:51.240 --> 00:17:54.890
is not just thinking about the individuals,
355
00:17:54.890 --> 00:17:56.687
but thinking about the way those individuals
356
00:17:56.687 --> 00:18:00.370
were represented and thinking very much about the way
357
00:18:00.370 --> 00:18:03.810
that portraiture was practiced and consumed
358
00:18:03.810 --> 00:18:07.100
in all of its kind of glory for the,
359
00:18:07.100 --> 00:18:10.750
so we're creating a history of portraiture, I suppose.
360
00:18:10.750 --> 00:18:13.040
And the wonderful thing about those images
361
00:18:13.040 --> 00:18:14.563
of Queen Victoria, like I say, they were,
362
00:18:14.563 --> 00:18:19.070
they were taken in 1860 and she made
363
00:18:19.070 --> 00:18:21.940
what must've been a really kind of radical decision
364
00:18:21.940 --> 00:18:24.364
at the time which was to make,
365
00:18:24.364 --> 00:18:26.500
there's a whole series of those photographs.
366
00:18:26.500 --> 00:18:28.040
The photographer went to Buckingham Palace.
367
00:18:28.040 --> 00:18:31.220
He photographed Victoria and Albert and all the kids,
368
00:18:31.220 --> 00:18:36.220
and Victoria gave permission for those images
369
00:18:36.270 --> 00:18:40.690
to be reproduced en masse and circulated everywhere.
370
00:18:41.685 --> 00:18:45.670
And that's how the carte de visite took hold,
371
00:18:45.670 --> 00:18:49.520
definitely in Australia those photographs were available
372
00:18:49.520 --> 00:18:54.260
here if not in 1860, then definitely by 1861.
373
00:18:54.260 --> 00:18:56.550
So very shortly after they were taken,
374
00:18:56.550 --> 00:19:00.240
and it almost, it basically paved the way
375
00:19:00.240 --> 00:19:04.880
for the uptake of photography on a massive scale here,
376
00:19:04.880 --> 00:19:06.390
not just because the carte de visite
377
00:19:06.390 --> 00:19:09.504
was such an affordable, accessible format,
378
00:19:09.504 --> 00:19:14.240
but because the queen was demonstrating to all and sundry
379
00:19:14.240 --> 00:19:17.780
that she was quite comfortable with circulating her image
380
00:19:17.780 --> 00:19:20.170
and popularising herself in that way.
381
00:19:20.170 --> 00:19:21.003
Yeah.
382
00:19:22.417 --> 00:19:25.288
I might, oh, sorry.
383
00:19:25.288 --> 00:19:27.888
I wonder if I might bring up,
384
00:19:27.888 --> 00:19:31.980
maybe we could get the photo of this portrait of the Queen
385
00:19:31.980 --> 00:19:35.238
being unveiled that I've put on my slides--
386
00:19:35.238 --> 00:19:36.071
Yes, I was going to ask you about those.
387
00:19:36.071 --> 00:19:38.313
I was intrigued by those images.
388
00:19:40.183 --> 00:19:42.110
And that one, they're all sipping simultaneously.
389
00:19:42.110 --> 00:19:43.540
I love that.
390
00:19:43.540 --> 00:19:46.490
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that's remarkable,
391
00:19:46.490 --> 00:19:48.710
like this is, the New Zealand Portrait Gallery
392
00:19:48.710 --> 00:19:51.500
has a really tiny collection.
393
00:19:51.500 --> 00:19:54.226
I, you know, something like 200 items,
394
00:19:54.226 --> 00:19:57.010
and this is one of the most recent items
395
00:19:57.010 --> 00:20:01.870
to add to our collection is this painting of the Queen,
396
00:20:01.870 --> 00:20:04.940
done from life by a New Zealand painter
397
00:20:04.940 --> 00:20:07.610
who went over to London
398
00:20:07.610 --> 00:20:10.160
and had a couple of sittings with her
399
00:20:10.160 --> 00:20:13.990
and then unveiled and as you can see,
400
00:20:13.990 --> 00:20:16.631
a very kind of grandiose ceremony,
401
00:20:16.631 --> 00:20:19.780
this painting you can see on the back wall
402
00:20:19.780 --> 00:20:22.650
is actually like another painting of the Queen
403
00:20:22.650 --> 00:20:26.420
from the fifties, I think, like a really old one,
404
00:20:26.420 --> 00:20:28.470
and this is a new one.
405
00:20:28.470 --> 00:20:31.540
This is like the new one for the 21st century.
406
00:20:31.540 --> 00:20:33.670
And apparently it was commissioned
407
00:20:33.670 --> 00:20:36.940
by a group of young New Zealanders
408
00:20:36.940 --> 00:20:41.329
who wanted to express their support for the Queen
409
00:20:41.329 --> 00:20:44.360
and so it's very interesting just sort of to see
410
00:20:44.360 --> 00:20:46.980
that this is still, I don't know,
411
00:20:46.980 --> 00:20:51.980
there's this idea of wanting a new image of the Queen
412
00:20:53.290 --> 00:20:56.170
with something very important to this group of people.
413
00:20:56.170 --> 00:20:58.150
And it's the first painting of the Queen
414
00:20:58.150 --> 00:21:01.580
made for New Zealand since this one in the fifties.
415
00:21:02.416 --> 00:21:04.460
And--
416
00:21:04.460 --> 00:21:06.660
It's interesting, it's in a traditional medium as well,
417
00:21:06.660 --> 00:21:08.916
because it's all on canvas, isn't it actually?
418
00:21:08.916 --> 00:21:13.900
So it's sort of fascinating sort of appropriateness
419
00:21:13.900 --> 00:21:14.733
about that.
420
00:21:15.740 --> 00:21:18.270
Yeah, but I also wanted to juxtapose it
421
00:21:18.270 --> 00:21:20.007
with this other painting of the Queen
422
00:21:20.007 --> 00:21:21.800
Van we get the painting of the Queen
423
00:21:21.800 --> 00:21:24.763
with a cigarette in her hand please?
424
00:21:27.480 --> 00:21:31.385
Because I think something that's so interesting
425
00:21:31.385 --> 00:21:35.890
about the kind of dissemination of the image
426
00:21:35.890 --> 00:21:38.383
is that the person disseminating their image
427
00:21:38.383 --> 00:21:40.628
loses control of it.
428
00:21:40.628 --> 00:21:43.880
And the queen can kind of disseminate her image
429
00:21:43.880 --> 00:21:46.526
all she likes in these sort of official media
430
00:21:46.526 --> 00:21:50.360
but artists are always free to do whatever they want
431
00:21:50.360 --> 00:21:53.302
with her image and this painting,
432
00:21:53.302 --> 00:21:54.870
it's kind of hard to tell from this image,
433
00:21:54.870 --> 00:21:58.205
but this is an immaculately painted painting,
434
00:21:58.205 --> 00:22:03.205
in technical terms it far exceeds that official painting
435
00:22:03.350 --> 00:22:04.840
we were just looking at.
436
00:22:04.840 --> 00:22:07.973
Like the detail on this is incredible.
437
00:22:08.910 --> 00:22:11.050
And it's a painting when you first look at it,
438
00:22:11.050 --> 00:22:12.530
you think sort of seems like
439
00:22:12.530 --> 00:22:15.150
a very reverent depiction of the Queen,
440
00:22:15.150 --> 00:22:16.460
but of course you look closer
441
00:22:16.460 --> 00:22:19.000
and you see the cigarette in her hand,
442
00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:21.500
and I've talked to Liz Moore who painted this,
443
00:22:21.500 --> 00:22:25.910
now 20 years ago, and she says, she wanted to think about
444
00:22:25.910 --> 00:22:29.050
the idea of like a kind of secret life.
445
00:22:29.050 --> 00:22:31.260
That there's sort of something about the Queen
446
00:22:31.260 --> 00:22:32.750
that we can access
447
00:22:32.750 --> 00:22:35.863
from her kind of official depictions.
448
00:22:36.780 --> 00:22:38.930
And, you know, maybe she secretly has a cigarette
449
00:22:38.930 --> 00:22:41.630
every now and then and we just don't know
450
00:22:41.630 --> 00:22:43.842
because her image is so curated.
451
00:22:43.842 --> 00:22:46.350
And I think this idea of image control
452
00:22:46.350 --> 00:22:47.763
is a really interesting one.
453
00:22:49.170 --> 00:22:50.280
Yeah.
454
00:22:50.280 --> 00:22:51.900
Very important, isn't it?
455
00:22:51.900 --> 00:22:54.756
It's interesting to see that that juxtaposition
456
00:22:54.756 --> 00:22:59.756
and the artistic freedom that in fact that represents,
457
00:22:59.970 --> 00:23:01.930
but of course the freedom comes
458
00:23:01.930 --> 00:23:05.990
depending upon what context the painting or the portrait
459
00:23:05.990 --> 00:23:07.960
is intended to be shown
460
00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:10.560
and I'd suggest who pays for it as well.
461
00:23:10.560 --> 00:23:14.050
But that seems to me a key issue here,
462
00:23:14.050 --> 00:23:16.050
because there's a sort of whole economic dimension
463
00:23:16.050 --> 00:23:19.557
behind formal portraiture, you know,
464
00:23:19.557 --> 00:23:21.860
greed endorsed portraiture
465
00:23:21.860 --> 00:23:26.270
and sort of private and more subversive portraiture
466
00:23:26.270 --> 00:23:28.780
that actually begs other questions.
467
00:23:28.780 --> 00:23:31.653
It's quite quite a strong distinction between the two.
468
00:23:32.780 --> 00:23:33.613
Hmm.
469
00:23:39.810 --> 00:23:44.810
Maybe we should go back to that sort of spectre
470
00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:48.910
that was raised by the recent portrait of the Queen,
471
00:23:48.910 --> 00:23:53.600
of the sort of portrait of, or the question of the quality,
472
00:23:53.600 --> 00:23:57.345
the aesthetic qualities of the work itself,
473
00:23:57.345 --> 00:24:00.620
because as I sort of mentioned at the start,
474
00:24:00.620 --> 00:24:03.930
I think that's, you know, that's one of the things
475
00:24:03.930 --> 00:24:06.480
certainly that you encounter
476
00:24:06.480 --> 00:24:09.240
as a curator of a portrait collection is this idea
477
00:24:09.240 --> 00:24:14.138
that it's not real art, portraits are somehow inferior
478
00:24:14.138 --> 00:24:16.000
for whatever reason,
479
00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:17.930
either that's because they are the sort of images
480
00:24:17.930 --> 00:24:20.060
that we see on coins and bank notes
481
00:24:20.060 --> 00:24:23.650
or on telly, in publicity, magazines, those sorts of things
482
00:24:23.650 --> 00:24:27.510
that they only show, you know a select,
483
00:24:27.510 --> 00:24:30.140
it's a very self-selecting genre.
484
00:24:30.140 --> 00:24:34.210
They only show a certain sort of group of people
485
00:24:34.210 --> 00:24:36.445
or category of people.
486
00:24:36.445 --> 00:24:39.750
They, of course also have an uncomfortable association
487
00:24:39.750 --> 00:24:44.710
with factors like pride and vanity, et cetera.
488
00:24:44.710 --> 00:24:47.530
And fundamentally I suppose the other thing
489
00:24:47.530 --> 00:24:50.550
that you're always encountering especially with,
490
00:24:50.550 --> 00:24:52.420
if you're like me and you're dealing
491
00:24:52.420 --> 00:24:57.420
or prefer to deal mostly with 19th century or colonial art,
492
00:24:57.630 --> 00:25:00.670
they're not artworks that necessarily originate out of
493
00:25:00.670 --> 00:25:04.000
or supposedly not artworks that originate out of,
494
00:25:04.000 --> 00:25:07.480
you know, artistic genius or creative inspiration.
495
00:25:07.480 --> 00:25:10.210
They're the result of a rather sort of
496
00:25:10.210 --> 00:25:12.630
dispassionate commercial transaction
497
00:25:12.630 --> 00:25:14.630
between an artist and a sitter
498
00:25:14.630 --> 00:25:16.500
who wants to be made to look
499
00:25:16.500 --> 00:25:18.110
powerful or beautiful or important,
500
00:25:18.110 --> 00:25:21.603
or, you know, insert adjective here.
501
00:25:22.590 --> 00:25:24.630
And then alternatively, and this is another thing
502
00:25:24.630 --> 00:25:26.766
that you often encounter when you're sort of dealing
503
00:25:26.766 --> 00:25:29.233
in the territory that I'm often in.
504
00:25:30.090 --> 00:25:32.740
There's the idea that portraits are artworks
505
00:25:32.740 --> 00:25:35.770
that are created primarily for historical
506
00:25:35.770 --> 00:25:38.630
or sort of record keeping purposes.
507
00:25:38.630 --> 00:25:41.550
So that individuals who were significant
508
00:25:41.550 --> 00:25:43.130
at particular periods of history
509
00:25:43.130 --> 00:25:47.620
can be documented and remembered in posterity.
510
00:25:47.620 --> 00:25:49.690
And I suppose that is seen as effective,
511
00:25:49.690 --> 00:25:50.563
which is sort of,
512
00:25:52.040 --> 00:25:56.090
people seem to think it kind of diminishes from the quality
513
00:25:56.090 --> 00:26:01.090
of the portrait or the merits of the portrait as an artwork.
514
00:26:01.400 --> 00:26:03.970
And for me, I don't know about you,
515
00:26:03.970 --> 00:26:05.963
I'd be really interested to sort of hear
516
00:26:05.963 --> 00:26:07.650
your kind of take on this,
517
00:26:07.650 --> 00:26:09.890
but in interpreting portrait collections,
518
00:26:09.890 --> 00:26:13.793
I've sort of found a way around that to be,
519
00:26:14.850 --> 00:26:18.818
to acknowledge those kinds of elements of portraiture
520
00:26:18.818 --> 00:26:23.818
and actually sort of use them to subvert, I suppose,
521
00:26:25.040 --> 00:26:27.890
and to dismantle some of those kinds of misconceptions
522
00:26:27.890 --> 00:26:31.390
that some people in some of our audiences may have
523
00:26:31.390 --> 00:26:35.160
about portraiture and about national portrait galleries
524
00:26:35.160 --> 00:26:37.340
and what it is that we do.
525
00:26:37.340 --> 00:26:40.420
Do you, either of you want to comment on
526
00:26:40.420 --> 00:26:44.520
that sort of concept, this idea that you can actually take
527
00:26:44.520 --> 00:26:46.650
what is seen to be a downside
528
00:26:46.650 --> 00:26:49.113
and make it work to your advantage.
529
00:26:50.060 --> 00:26:51.990
You've opened up a lot of questions there.
530
00:26:51.990 --> 00:26:54.820
My goodness, that's quite a challenge.
531
00:26:54.820 --> 00:26:57.270
I think two or three strands of what you said
532
00:26:57.270 --> 00:26:58.360
really resonate with me.
533
00:26:58.360 --> 00:27:00.649
It's very interesting the way you describe
534
00:27:00.649 --> 00:27:01.950
the power of portraiture.
535
00:27:01.950 --> 00:27:03.450
So there is a sort of business element
536
00:27:03.450 --> 00:27:05.480
to the production of portraiture as there was
537
00:27:05.480 --> 00:27:07.689
back in the 19th century,
538
00:27:07.689 --> 00:27:11.670
and also like artists who specialise in portraiture,
539
00:27:11.670 --> 00:27:14.980
like artists who specialise in many other different types
540
00:27:14.980 --> 00:27:16.670
of subject matter and genre,
541
00:27:16.670 --> 00:27:19.300
there are those who are not so accomplished
542
00:27:19.300 --> 00:27:20.910
and those who are outstanding.
543
00:27:20.910 --> 00:27:22.660
So there are, I think we have to recognise
544
00:27:22.660 --> 00:27:25.160
is there there is a great tradition of great portraiture,
545
00:27:25.160 --> 00:27:26.563
artistically speaking.
546
00:27:27.440 --> 00:27:29.240
There's also a strong issue here,
547
00:27:29.240 --> 00:27:31.610
it's about the commemorative role
548
00:27:31.610 --> 00:27:36.380
and how you have portraits project into the future status.
549
00:27:36.380 --> 00:27:39.099
I suppose that's a key thing.
550
00:27:39.099 --> 00:27:43.690
One of the ways in which we cut through that
551
00:27:43.690 --> 00:27:48.470
is I suppose, because of the incredible attraction
552
00:27:48.470 --> 00:27:52.060
and power, the visceral power of engaging
553
00:27:52.060 --> 00:27:55.144
with somebody else's personality and face and appearance,
554
00:27:55.144 --> 00:27:59.760
and perhaps with the choices they have made
555
00:27:59.760 --> 00:28:02.240
about how they want to be commemorated,
556
00:28:02.240 --> 00:28:04.690
which could be through a modest cuts vise,
557
00:28:04.690 --> 00:28:07.160
through it could be through a very grand painting
558
00:28:07.160 --> 00:28:10.200
or sculpture or it could be another media too.
559
00:28:10.200 --> 00:28:13.100
So there is an issue there.
560
00:28:13.100 --> 00:28:15.290
The other thing that, the other reason
561
00:28:15.290 --> 00:28:18.890
I think in particular, why portrait galleries are
562
00:28:18.890 --> 00:28:20.700
and portrait collections are more exciting
563
00:28:20.700 --> 00:28:22.250
and engaging and important than ever
564
00:28:22.250 --> 00:28:24.921
is because of the digital age we're in.
565
00:28:24.921 --> 00:28:28.690
We all take and make and are the subjects of portraits,
566
00:28:28.690 --> 00:28:30.510
or not everybody, but many do,
567
00:28:30.510 --> 00:28:33.090
because we have phones in our pockets
568
00:28:33.090 --> 00:28:34.360
that allow us to do that.
569
00:28:34.360 --> 00:28:36.290
Now, in my case, I have to say,
570
00:28:36.290 --> 00:28:39.573
I'm no great portrait maker at all through digital imagery.
571
00:28:40.660 --> 00:28:43.620
The reason I bring that up, because there's been,
572
00:28:43.620 --> 00:28:45.797
through that there's been a huge democratisation
573
00:28:45.797 --> 00:28:49.350
of creating a portrait,
574
00:28:49.350 --> 00:28:52.912
which I think actually sharpens our judgments
575
00:28:52.912 --> 00:28:57.300
about what is a good portrait and not such a good portrait
576
00:28:57.300 --> 00:29:02.170
and also makes us think hard about, and rightly so,
577
00:29:02.170 --> 00:29:05.925
about who should be in a portrait gallery,
578
00:29:05.925 --> 00:29:08.353
because just as you were describing earlier,
579
00:29:08.353 --> 00:29:10.717
and I think, you know, the door's are open
580
00:29:10.717 --> 00:29:12.330
and it shouldn't, the portrait gallery
581
00:29:12.330 --> 00:29:16.560
should mirror all of society if at all possible.
582
00:29:16.560 --> 00:29:20.301
That's utterly different to the late 19th century
583
00:29:20.301 --> 00:29:24.940
sort of model that we've grown away from.
584
00:29:24.940 --> 00:29:25.773
Hmm.
585
00:29:26.720 --> 00:29:29.350
Did you want to comment on that, Paul?
586
00:29:29.350 --> 00:29:33.983
Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to, there's a lot there.
587
00:29:34.886 --> 00:29:38.796
I think, I mean, I know that
588
00:29:38.796 --> 00:29:40.550
at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery,
589
00:29:40.550 --> 00:29:45.377
we were very interested in trying to make our collection
590
00:29:47.530 --> 00:29:52.530
more representative of the nation in every kind of respect.
591
00:29:54.210 --> 00:29:56.360
And one of the things that's kind of remarkable
592
00:29:56.360 --> 00:30:00.240
is it's a, a gallery is very, has a small collection
593
00:30:00.240 --> 00:30:01.760
and it's not a very old collection,
594
00:30:01.760 --> 00:30:02.860
but it's still a collection
595
00:30:02.860 --> 00:30:07.550
that has exactly the same kinds of biases as you would see
596
00:30:07.550 --> 00:30:11.610
in a collection 200 years old.
597
00:30:11.610 --> 00:30:16.610
I think we have maybe one portrait by a woman
598
00:30:18.511 --> 00:30:22.173
in our entire collection, things like this,
599
00:30:23.135 --> 00:30:27.773
and we don't really collect, is the thing, anymore.
600
00:30:28.920 --> 00:30:33.920
So it's, we, I think we kind of work to open up
601
00:30:33.920 --> 00:30:38.920
different possibilities for what a portrait gallery can be
602
00:30:39.272 --> 00:30:42.090
through our kind of exhibition program
603
00:30:42.090 --> 00:30:46.620
of loan exhibitions essentially.
604
00:30:46.620 --> 00:30:48.290
All of our exhibitions basically
605
00:30:48.290 --> 00:30:52.700
are built around loans almost entirely.
606
00:30:52.700 --> 00:30:53.895
Yeah.
607
00:30:53.895 --> 00:30:54.728
Mm.
608
00:30:54.728 --> 00:30:57.370
And would you say that your institutions
609
00:30:57.370 --> 00:30:59.463
and you as curators,
610
00:31:00.610 --> 00:31:02.800
so as representatives of national portrait galleries
611
00:31:02.800 --> 00:31:05.431
and as curators of portrait collections,
612
00:31:05.431 --> 00:31:08.355
are you, can you tell us about some examples
613
00:31:08.355 --> 00:31:11.650
from your own work or from your institution
614
00:31:11.650 --> 00:31:15.210
where you think we are, work that you're doing
615
00:31:15.210 --> 00:31:18.173
that you think is subverting those sort of conceptions?
616
00:31:19.915 --> 00:31:23.770
And I know Christopher, you had a couple of slides.
617
00:31:23.770 --> 00:31:25.962
Well, one particular example--
618
00:31:25.962 --> 00:31:29.090
I really appreciate using in this context
619
00:31:29.090 --> 00:31:32.110
to help answer your important question.
620
00:31:32.110 --> 00:31:34.600
It's the actual, "Brain of the Artist."
621
00:31:34.600 --> 00:31:36.340
That's the title, it's glass.
622
00:31:36.340 --> 00:31:37.787
Yeah. That's a fantastic work
623
00:31:37.787 --> 00:31:39.360
And that's a sculpture.
624
00:31:39.360 --> 00:31:41.770
If we could look at that and if I could just take a moment
625
00:31:41.770 --> 00:31:44.340
to explain what this is and how it relates
626
00:31:44.340 --> 00:31:46.340
to the questions you've asked.
627
00:31:46.340 --> 00:31:50.980
So this is work acquired in the last 10 years
628
00:31:50.980 --> 00:31:53.340
by an artist called Angela Palmer
629
00:31:53.340 --> 00:31:55.380
who was born in Aberdeen, in Scotland
630
00:31:55.380 --> 00:31:58.310
and she works in different media.
631
00:31:58.310 --> 00:32:02.400
And what you're looking at here is a glass sculpture
632
00:32:02.400 --> 00:32:04.810
which consists of a series of sheets of glass
633
00:32:04.810 --> 00:32:09.810
that have been very delicately engraved and lit from below
634
00:32:10.870 --> 00:32:14.690
and extraordinarily, this is a representation of a scan
635
00:32:14.690 --> 00:32:17.391
of the artist's own brain, okay.
636
00:32:17.391 --> 00:32:22.100
And it's a very strange, rather haunting
637
00:32:22.100 --> 00:32:24.980
and most unusual form of self portraiture.
638
00:32:24.980 --> 00:32:27.760
That's why I think it's interesting here,
639
00:32:27.760 --> 00:32:31.240
because we're so used to, if I may put it like this,
640
00:32:31.240 --> 00:32:34.860
reading people's faces in order to, you know,
641
00:32:34.860 --> 00:32:39.160
engage with them, but here we've got a fundamental image
642
00:32:39.160 --> 00:32:41.480
about this person's, this artist's
643
00:32:41.480 --> 00:32:44.400
sort of specific characteristics, and it throws up
644
00:32:44.400 --> 00:32:47.070
lots of fascinating questions about identity,
645
00:32:47.070 --> 00:32:48.773
and indeed, whether this is a portrait
646
00:32:48.773 --> 00:32:52.770
as we would normally describe it.
647
00:32:52.770 --> 00:32:57.340
And, when we acquired this, it, we really didn't know
648
00:32:57.340 --> 00:32:58.440
what the impact would be.
649
00:32:58.440 --> 00:33:00.570
It's very, sometimes quite hard to judge, you know,
650
00:33:00.570 --> 00:33:03.653
how visitors and audiences will react.
651
00:33:03.653 --> 00:33:08.653
And in Scotland, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
652
00:33:10.032 --> 00:33:11.720
Begged lots of questions.
653
00:33:11.720 --> 00:33:12.790
People were fascinated.
654
00:33:12.790 --> 00:33:14.610
They were, there was a lot of discussions
655
00:33:14.610 --> 00:33:17.220
going on around it, as you might imagine,
656
00:33:17.220 --> 00:33:18.600
which is very pleasing,
657
00:33:18.600 --> 00:33:22.760
but it also bridged different audiences
658
00:33:22.760 --> 00:33:25.310
and perhaps this is obvious, but we hadn't anticipated it.
659
00:33:25.310 --> 00:33:28.290
Not only where lots of gallery visitors really interested,
660
00:33:28.290 --> 00:33:30.560
but it engaged the scientific community too
661
00:33:30.560 --> 00:33:32.878
because of its nature.
662
00:33:32.878 --> 00:33:37.490
And it's slightly hard to describe.
663
00:33:37.490 --> 00:33:40.232
I want you all please to come and see it in person.
664
00:33:40.232 --> 00:33:44.170
It's like one of those, it's one of those objects
665
00:33:44.170 --> 00:33:46.550
that really is not well served by reproduction.
666
00:33:46.550 --> 00:33:48.240
In fact, having spoken a lot about
667
00:33:48.240 --> 00:33:49.640
how things are reproduced,
668
00:33:49.640 --> 00:33:54.640
but it's strangely tremulously beautiful actually,
669
00:33:54.707 --> 00:33:57.757
but it takes that the whole idea of portraiture
670
00:33:57.757 --> 00:34:00.110
and what portraiture is and the power of portraiture
671
00:34:00.110 --> 00:34:02.280
offered a completely different direction
672
00:34:02.280 --> 00:34:07.280
from what most of our collection suggest to people.
673
00:34:07.493 --> 00:34:08.865
Mm.
674
00:34:08.865 --> 00:34:11.050
And I love the way, well, for me, I mean
675
00:34:11.050 --> 00:34:13.830
one of the things that really resonates with me
676
00:34:13.830 --> 00:34:17.900
about that work is it's situation in Edinburgh,
677
00:34:17.900 --> 00:34:21.360
which was the sort of cradle of medical teaching
678
00:34:21.360 --> 00:34:23.810
for 18th and 19th century,
679
00:34:23.810 --> 00:34:28.117
so it's got this wonderful sort of conversation,
680
00:34:28.117 --> 00:34:31.510
it's in wonderful conversation with its location
681
00:34:32.640 --> 00:34:35.090
and with your beautiful 19th century building.
682
00:34:35.090 --> 00:34:39.310
And I remember when I last visited the NPG in Edinburgh
683
00:34:39.310 --> 00:34:42.110
being very envious of that wonderful sort of room
684
00:34:42.110 --> 00:34:45.650
that you have with all of that fantastic collection
685
00:34:45.650 --> 00:34:50.650
of death masks, which I was very covetous of, I must say.
686
00:34:51.900 --> 00:34:52.733
Well, you're looking there at the,
687
00:34:52.733 --> 00:34:53.790
thank you for bringing up that slide,
688
00:34:53.790 --> 00:34:57.880
'cause that's the gallery, it's a sort of palace of art
689
00:34:57.880 --> 00:34:59.320
is probably the way to describe it,
690
00:34:59.320 --> 00:35:01.940
very much in 19th century taste.
691
00:35:01.940 --> 00:35:04.420
And you can see the great hall of the gallery.
692
00:35:04.420 --> 00:35:06.510
I hope that everyone would see that.
693
00:35:06.510 --> 00:35:08.800
Now "The Brain of the Artist" which we were just looking at,
694
00:35:08.800 --> 00:35:11.050
when we first displayed it we put it right in the middle
695
00:35:11.050 --> 00:35:14.350
of that hall and it was sensational,
696
00:35:14.350 --> 00:35:17.670
having the contrast between this very impressive,
697
00:35:17.670 --> 00:35:19.930
but very traditional setting
698
00:35:19.930 --> 00:35:24.590
and a radical and thought provoking portrait,
699
00:35:24.590 --> 00:35:27.059
and self portrait in this case, in the middle of it.
700
00:35:27.059 --> 00:35:29.480
May I just pick on something you said?
701
00:35:29.480 --> 00:35:32.494
You mentioned about conversations and resonance
702
00:35:32.494 --> 00:35:36.180
and it's absolutely I think key in the moment,
703
00:35:36.180 --> 00:35:40.710
that's it seems to us that portrays are powerful
704
00:35:40.710 --> 00:35:42.899
when they get people talking, they get,
705
00:35:42.899 --> 00:35:45.439
it's that engagement and that challenge
706
00:35:45.439 --> 00:35:50.160
that really is a measure I suppose,
707
00:35:50.160 --> 00:35:55.160
of whether we're doing our work well or not,
708
00:35:55.867 --> 00:35:58.943
in fact, actually, as curators really.
709
00:36:00.507 --> 00:36:01.540
And there was another one of your slides,
710
00:36:01.540 --> 00:36:04.130
I think Christopher, that you sort of have discussed
711
00:36:04.130 --> 00:36:05.610
in that context that the portrait
712
00:36:05.610 --> 00:36:08.860
of the three oncologists by Ken Currie.
713
00:36:08.860 --> 00:36:11.380
Yeah, could we just very briefly show, this is a--
714
00:36:11.380 --> 00:36:12.860
Yeah, that's a wonderful painting.
715
00:36:12.860 --> 00:36:13.820
It is an amazing painting.
716
00:36:13.820 --> 00:36:15.804
It's a large oil painting, this,
717
00:36:15.804 --> 00:36:20.790
and it shows just as you say, three oncologists,
718
00:36:20.790 --> 00:36:24.580
three very distinguished experts who are engaged
719
00:36:24.580 --> 00:36:26.520
with the fight against cancer.
720
00:36:26.520 --> 00:36:29.110
It was actually thee, when this was painted some,
721
00:36:29.110 --> 00:36:31.924
few years back now, they were all working in Dundee,
722
00:36:31.924 --> 00:36:35.120
very distinguished centre for research
723
00:36:35.120 --> 00:36:38.849
and it is an extraordinary painting.
724
00:36:38.849 --> 00:36:42.970
It's a very powerful, very, I have to say,
725
00:36:42.970 --> 00:36:44.130
very disturbing painting.
726
00:36:44.130 --> 00:36:46.840
I mean, it disturbs me every time I see it
727
00:36:46.840 --> 00:36:50.110
but once you know a little more about how and why
728
00:36:50.110 --> 00:36:54.743
it was created, it has proved to be very, very inspiring
729
00:36:56.120 --> 00:36:58.881
in fact, for many people who've come to see it.
730
00:36:58.881 --> 00:37:00.230
So the three men who you see here,
731
00:37:00.230 --> 00:37:03.120
they've just been engaged with a procedure,
732
00:37:03.120 --> 00:37:06.360
and they are literally rapidly moving away from it
733
00:37:06.360 --> 00:37:08.160
because they want to go and share everything
734
00:37:08.160 --> 00:37:11.030
that they've learned with other colleagues across the UK
735
00:37:11.030 --> 00:37:12.384
and around the world.
736
00:37:12.384 --> 00:37:15.330
They are engaged in the highest levels of research
737
00:37:15.330 --> 00:37:17.290
and this incredibly important fight
738
00:37:17.290 --> 00:37:20.820
against this devastating disease.
739
00:37:20.820 --> 00:37:24.390
And it's a painting that's become again,
740
00:37:24.390 --> 00:37:26.310
an overused term, but it's become a bit of an icon
741
00:37:26.310 --> 00:37:29.438
for our collection because so people remember it,
742
00:37:29.438 --> 00:37:33.840
the sort of ghostly figures emerging from a dark background,
743
00:37:33.840 --> 00:37:35.650
but we've also had so many people
744
00:37:35.650 --> 00:37:37.640
who've wanted to come and see it because
745
00:37:37.640 --> 00:37:42.030
their lives have been touched by this terrible disease.
746
00:37:42.030 --> 00:37:43.810
And actually they, I know,
747
00:37:43.810 --> 00:37:45.290
because I've spoken to a number of people,
748
00:37:45.290 --> 00:37:46.993
there's a different type of power here we're talking about.
749
00:37:46.993 --> 00:37:49.050
But for a number of people,
750
00:37:49.050 --> 00:37:53.670
that's personally very powerful for them
751
00:37:53.670 --> 00:37:58.390
and I suppose reassuring, that's a very simple description,
752
00:37:58.390 --> 00:38:00.720
but it means that it's great to be reassured
753
00:38:00.720 --> 00:38:04.150
that such brilliant people, such great brains,
754
00:38:04.150 --> 00:38:06.990
are engaged in this very important fight.
755
00:38:06.990 --> 00:38:11.035
So that's a very different type of power from portraiture
756
00:38:11.035 --> 00:38:14.930
to the sort we've been looking at earlier on,
757
00:38:14.930 --> 00:38:17.766
a very personal, very, very modern as well
758
00:38:17.766 --> 00:38:19.250
I think actually.
759
00:38:19.250 --> 00:38:21.470
Yeah, and I've just got an alarming message
760
00:38:21.470 --> 00:38:23.180
on my screen saying that we've only got
761
00:38:23.180 --> 00:38:26.008
about 10 minutes to go, and I know Paul,
762
00:38:26.008 --> 00:38:28.610
you've also been working on
763
00:38:28.610 --> 00:38:30.440
yet another really interesting exhibition,
764
00:38:30.440 --> 00:38:34.640
which I wish I have could have got to Wellington to see.
765
00:38:34.640 --> 00:38:37.180
And that was an exhibition based on a works
766
00:38:37.180 --> 00:38:39.400
from the collection of the Alexander Turnbull Library
767
00:38:39.400 --> 00:38:42.380
in Wellington and it was an exhibition
768
00:38:42.380 --> 00:38:44.170
sort of looking at the relevance,
769
00:38:44.170 --> 00:38:46.480
the contemporary relevance of historical portraiture,
770
00:38:46.480 --> 00:38:48.500
and I know in the slides that you sent through
771
00:38:48.500 --> 00:38:52.940
there were some fantastic images to discuss,
772
00:38:52.940 --> 00:38:56.760
and I'm particularly intrigued by all of those variations
773
00:38:56.760 --> 00:39:00.530
on the Tupaia drawing of Joseph Banks with the lobster.
774
00:39:00.530 --> 00:39:02.062
Could you tell us a little bit of those
775
00:39:02.062 --> 00:39:04.564
in the context of that exhibition?
776
00:39:04.564 --> 00:39:06.150
Absolutely.
777
00:39:06.150 --> 00:39:09.496
So maybe we can get the original drawing, yeah.
778
00:39:09.496 --> 00:39:13.830
So this drawing is in the British Library.
779
00:39:13.830 --> 00:39:16.772
It's not here in New Zealand for us to put on show,
780
00:39:16.772 --> 00:39:21.100
but it's an image by this guy, Tupaia,
781
00:39:21.100 --> 00:39:25.040
who served as, he was from the place we now call Tahiti
782
00:39:26.210 --> 00:39:29.080
and he was the navigator for James Cook
783
00:39:29.080 --> 00:39:32.456
on one of his trips down into the Pacific
784
00:39:32.456 --> 00:39:36.043
and this is a drawing he did,
785
00:39:36.930 --> 00:39:39.610
and it's a drawing we think that the European man
786
00:39:39.610 --> 00:39:42.540
is Joseph Banks and we don't really have an idea
787
00:39:42.540 --> 00:39:44.043
of who this Maori man is,
788
00:39:45.319 --> 00:39:47.260
but it's a really interesting example
789
00:39:47.260 --> 00:39:51.620
of a very early kind of portrait almost
790
00:39:51.620 --> 00:39:55.650
and the kind of Western tradition of portraiture
791
00:39:55.650 --> 00:40:00.460
of these two individuals, even if we can't identify
792
00:40:00.460 --> 00:40:03.150
who they are, and it's an item that's proved
793
00:40:03.150 --> 00:40:06.853
very resonant for contemporary artists in New Zealand.
794
00:40:07.720 --> 00:40:10.460
That's one of the sort of earliest surviving depictions
795
00:40:10.460 --> 00:40:14.470
of a Maori person and it's sort of significant
796
00:40:14.470 --> 00:40:17.880
because it was drawn by another person who was Pacific,
797
00:40:17.880 --> 00:40:19.340
not a European.
798
00:40:19.340 --> 00:40:22.363
It's not one of these kinds of ethnographic depictions.
799
00:40:23.440 --> 00:40:27.740
Which so many of the images from Cook's voyages were.
800
00:40:27.740 --> 00:40:28.573
Exactly.
801
00:40:28.573 --> 00:40:30.650
I mean, we can, if we can bring up
802
00:40:30.650 --> 00:40:32.690
the first two, the "Man of Easter Island"
803
00:40:32.690 --> 00:40:34.776
and "Man of New Zealand,"
804
00:40:34.776 --> 00:40:38.493
those are perfect examples of those.
805
00:40:39.910 --> 00:40:43.080
You know, these people called Man of Easter Island
806
00:40:43.080 --> 00:40:45.090
Man of New Zealand.
807
00:40:45.090 --> 00:40:47.960
This is just kind of, they stand for a type
808
00:40:47.960 --> 00:40:51.335
and "Men of New Zealand," for example
809
00:40:51.335 --> 00:40:54.650
we know exactly where he was from.
810
00:40:54.650 --> 00:40:56.390
We know what his name was.
811
00:40:56.390 --> 00:40:59.390
And I can't remember those details off the top of my head,
812
00:40:59.390 --> 00:41:03.140
but he, this is a depiction of a real person,
813
00:41:03.140 --> 00:41:04.570
a specific real person,
814
00:41:04.570 --> 00:41:06.320
but he's called Man of New Zealand.
815
00:41:07.580 --> 00:41:10.382
Anyway, so this picture by Tupaia
816
00:41:10.382 --> 00:41:12.710
has been really resonant for New Zealand artists.
817
00:41:12.710 --> 00:41:14.400
And I feel like there's a, you know,
818
00:41:14.400 --> 00:41:16.990
a potential exhibition just of these.
819
00:41:16.990 --> 00:41:19.140
It'd be really interesting to see.
820
00:41:19.140 --> 00:41:23.850
So there's exactly, this is by a painter called Ayesha Green
821
00:41:23.850 --> 00:41:25.750
and this is a huge work.
822
00:41:25.750 --> 00:41:29.340
This is, this tiny little drawing blown up
823
00:41:29.340 --> 00:41:34.020
to be I think two meters tall and three meters wide
824
00:41:34.020 --> 00:41:38.160
and Ayesha's like characteristic style is to like
825
00:41:38.160 --> 00:41:40.440
flatten the thing she depicts
826
00:41:40.440 --> 00:41:42.560
and you kind of lose that in this one,
827
00:41:42.560 --> 00:41:47.101
because the original she's working from is flattened itself.
828
00:41:47.101 --> 00:41:51.760
But Ayesha I think, Ayesha is a Maori artist herself.
829
00:41:51.760 --> 00:41:53.830
And I think she's really interested in
830
00:41:53.830 --> 00:41:57.820
thinking about colonial encounters and representing them
831
00:41:57.820 --> 00:41:59.143
in her practice.
832
00:42:00.070 --> 00:42:03.913
Anyway, so the other, if we can show the embroidery now,
833
00:42:05.540 --> 00:42:10.235
this is one we actually showed at our gallery,
834
00:42:10.235 --> 00:42:12.820
and Sarah Munro actually like
835
00:42:12.820 --> 00:42:14.800
replicates this image serially.
836
00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:17.963
She's done about 30 of these embroideries,
837
00:42:18.850 --> 00:42:21.370
and they all centre on these two figures
838
00:42:21.370 --> 00:42:25.040
and she kind of changes the objects
839
00:42:25.040 --> 00:42:29.080
that they're exchanging to kind of comment on
840
00:42:29.080 --> 00:42:32.980
New Zealand's kind of ecosystem, largely,
841
00:42:32.980 --> 00:42:36.030
the effects of the colonial encounter on our wildlife.
842
00:42:36.030 --> 00:42:38.400
So you see here, the Maori figure has birds
843
00:42:39.420 --> 00:42:44.067
and the European figure has cats and possums and weasels
844
00:42:45.268 --> 00:42:50.268
that are kind of a threat to these animals, to these birds.
845
00:42:51.050 --> 00:42:54.370
Anyway, so like what we were interested in doing
846
00:42:54.370 --> 00:42:56.320
in this exhibition, and this work by Sarah Munro
847
00:42:56.320 --> 00:42:58.510
is part of it, we're interested in thinking about
848
00:42:58.510 --> 00:43:03.510
how historical portraiture can be a source for people to,
849
00:43:03.530 --> 00:43:07.470
for artists to react to and reinterpret the past
850
00:43:07.470 --> 00:43:10.850
and make sense of it in different ways.
851
00:43:10.850 --> 00:43:12.080
Yeah.
852
00:43:12.080 --> 00:43:12.970
Yeah.
853
00:43:12.970 --> 00:43:15.220
If we've got time, can we just quickly have,
854
00:43:15.220 --> 00:43:17.783
while we're on the subject of Joseph Banks,
855
00:43:18.880 --> 00:43:20.910
could we have a look, firstly,
856
00:43:20.910 --> 00:43:23.210
a very very different representation of Banks.
857
00:43:23.210 --> 00:43:27.363
That's a mezzotint after a painting by Benjamin West.
858
00:43:28.550 --> 00:43:33.494
So it's Bank with his, he's got a buck cloth cloak
859
00:43:33.494 --> 00:43:35.210
and all of his booty that he collected
860
00:43:35.210 --> 00:43:36.423
on the end of a voyage.
861
00:43:46.170 --> 00:43:47.003
Yes, there we are.
862
00:43:47.003 --> 00:43:50.950
So this is a mezzotint from our collection.
863
00:43:50.950 --> 00:43:54.092
The original painting is in the Usher gallery
864
00:43:54.092 --> 00:43:57.611
in Lincolnshire in the UK.
865
00:43:57.611 --> 00:44:00.180
Banks, of course, he was painted famously,
866
00:44:00.180 --> 00:44:05.180
painted twice for the 1773 Royal Academy exhibition.
867
00:44:05.540 --> 00:44:07.370
The very famous painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds
868
00:44:07.370 --> 00:44:10.740
which is at NPG London and a painting by Benjamin West
869
00:44:10.740 --> 00:44:13.220
of which this is a print.
870
00:44:13.220 --> 00:44:18.220
So it's, you know, I don't like using the word iconic,
871
00:44:18.860 --> 00:44:21.520
but it is kind of an iconic representation of Banks.
872
00:44:21.520 --> 00:44:24.970
And very much speaks to that sort of, you know,
873
00:44:24.970 --> 00:44:28.793
devil may care kind of looting attitude that he took towards
874
00:44:28.793 --> 00:44:32.160
his voyage on the Endeavour.
875
00:44:32.160 --> 00:44:34.440
For him, it was, you know, it was very much an adventure.
876
00:44:34.440 --> 00:44:37.473
He sort of dressed it up as science, but, you know,
877
00:44:37.473 --> 00:44:40.490
it was also, you know, he famously said, of course,
878
00:44:40.490 --> 00:44:42.490
that he wasn't going to do the grand tour of Europe
879
00:44:42.490 --> 00:44:43.900
because every blockhead does that.
880
00:44:43.900 --> 00:44:45.460
His grand tour was going to be a tour
881
00:44:45.460 --> 00:44:47.053
around the whole world.
882
00:44:48.070 --> 00:44:50.700
But this is a, I think a really sort of fantastic example
883
00:44:50.700 --> 00:44:54.050
of what you were talking about, Paul, about how even,
884
00:44:54.050 --> 00:44:55.660
you know, on the face of it,
885
00:44:55.660 --> 00:44:58.910
something which is historical and problematic
886
00:44:58.910 --> 00:45:02.630
can actually be utilised and subverted
887
00:45:02.630 --> 00:45:05.010
in really creative ways by contemporary artists.
888
00:45:05.010 --> 00:45:08.150
And if we go to the next slide along, Robert,
889
00:45:08.150 --> 00:45:12.830
we'll see this image by an indigenous Australian artist
890
00:45:12.830 --> 00:45:14.330
named Daniel Boyd.
891
00:45:14.330 --> 00:45:18.870
He's from the Queensland area and it's part of a series,
892
00:45:18.870 --> 00:45:22.631
so there's this kind of subversion
893
00:45:22.631 --> 00:45:25.350
of West's painting of Banks.
894
00:45:25.350 --> 00:45:27.500
There's a similar one,
895
00:45:27.500 --> 00:45:29.500
which is at the national gallery actually,
896
00:45:29.500 --> 00:45:31.920
which is where he's kind of subverting
897
00:45:31.920 --> 00:45:34.970
James Weber's portrait of James Cook,
898
00:45:34.970 --> 00:45:36.270
John Weber's portrait of James Cook,
899
00:45:36.270 --> 00:45:37.540
which is in our collection,
900
00:45:37.540 --> 00:45:39.450
and there's also a painting of King George III,
901
00:45:39.450 --> 00:45:42.230
I think he's done a take on Nathaniel Dance's
902
00:45:42.230 --> 00:45:45.850
painting of George III, but on the face of it,
903
00:45:45.850 --> 00:45:48.383
this is, you know, this is a parody,
904
00:45:48.383 --> 00:45:52.890
but it's also an incredibly rich and powerful
905
00:45:52.890 --> 00:45:57.040
and incisive kind of critique of the behaviour
906
00:45:57.040 --> 00:45:59.464
that Joseph Banks was engaged in.
907
00:45:59.464 --> 00:46:03.470
And you'll see, just sort of near his foot there,
908
00:46:03.470 --> 00:46:06.790
his left foot, there's a, it's actually a self portrait
909
00:46:06.790 --> 00:46:08.830
by the artist and that's actually,
910
00:46:08.830 --> 00:46:13.460
it's referencing Joseph Bank's souveniring
911
00:46:13.460 --> 00:46:16.850
the head of a Darug warrior named Pemulwuy
912
00:46:17.830 --> 00:46:19.870
and, you know, souveniring that
913
00:46:19.870 --> 00:46:22.263
and sending it back to England to be housed
914
00:46:22.263 --> 00:46:24.370
in a collection somewhere.
915
00:46:24.370 --> 00:46:26.300
So it's actually, like I say,
916
00:46:26.300 --> 00:46:31.300
a very sort of powerful critique of, you know,
917
00:46:32.610 --> 00:46:37.610
these colonial, these tremendously awful colonial practices,
918
00:46:37.860 --> 00:46:41.210
but how contemporary artists can manage to at least,
919
00:46:41.210 --> 00:46:45.050
you know, reclaim some of that imagery and sort of twist it
920
00:46:45.050 --> 00:46:46.894
to their own ends and subvert
921
00:46:46.894 --> 00:46:49.360
what would otherwise have been
922
00:46:49.360 --> 00:46:53.450
a very sort of powerful representation
923
00:46:53.450 --> 00:46:55.260
of a powerful white figure.
924
00:46:55.260 --> 00:46:57.290
Does this mean we're out of time?
925
00:46:57.290 --> 00:46:58.123
I'm sorry.
926
00:47:00.180 --> 00:47:02.340
There was actually one question for you, Paul,
927
00:47:02.340 --> 00:47:05.530
which I think will answer very quickly.
928
00:47:05.530 --> 00:47:07.302
A question from Jennifer who wants to know
929
00:47:07.302 --> 00:47:09.310
if you could explain what you meant
930
00:47:09.310 --> 00:47:12.480
when you said that the Portrait Gallery of New Zealand
931
00:47:12.480 --> 00:47:16.923
doesn't collect, is that a budget factor or is it?
932
00:47:18.400 --> 00:47:20.163
So it's two fold.
933
00:47:21.040 --> 00:47:22.660
In the one hand, it's a budget thing.
934
00:47:22.660 --> 00:47:27.660
We don't really, we operate entirely on a donations basis.
935
00:47:30.010 --> 00:47:32.512
So we don't have a huge budget.
936
00:47:32.512 --> 00:47:36.640
And the other thing is that we also don't have much space.
937
00:47:36.640 --> 00:47:39.730
Our collection store is pretty much full.
938
00:47:39.730 --> 00:47:41.160
If we get anything new,
939
00:47:41.160 --> 00:47:43.310
we'll have to get rid of something we have.
940
00:47:45.590 --> 00:47:47.040
It sounds like my wardrobe.
941
00:47:53.080 --> 00:47:54.500
Well, yeah, I'm terribly sorry,
942
00:47:54.500 --> 00:47:56.460
but I'm afraid I've waffled on too long
943
00:47:56.460 --> 00:47:58.920
and we have gone over time.
944
00:47:58.920 --> 00:47:59.847
But before I hand back to Gill,
945
00:47:59.847 --> 00:48:02.550
I just wanted to thank you both.
946
00:48:02.550 --> 00:48:03.860
Maybe we should have a round two.
947
00:48:03.860 --> 00:48:08.860
There's obviously a lot of fruit in this discussion.
948
00:48:09.600 --> 00:48:12.610
So it's been really lovely to speak to you this evening,
949
00:48:12.610 --> 00:48:14.720
and this morning in your case, Christopher,
950
00:48:14.720 --> 00:48:16.290
and thanks so much for agreeing
951
00:48:16.290 --> 00:48:18.073
to be part of 15 Minutes of Frame.
952
00:48:19.014 --> 00:48:20.510
Thank you.
Thank you.
953
00:48:20.510 --> 00:48:24.240
It's been a pleasure, so thank you.
954
00:48:24.240 --> 00:48:26.610
Thank you so much, Christopher, Paul, and Jo,
955
00:48:26.610 --> 00:48:28.440
I could've listened to that all night.
956
00:48:28.440 --> 00:48:31.320
Honestly, when Jo said, perhaps we should do a part two
957
00:48:31.320 --> 00:48:33.630
I think you took the words right out of my mouth.
958
00:48:33.630 --> 00:48:35.620
Might be a part three and part four,
959
00:48:35.620 --> 00:48:37.960
a can of worms has turned into a cabin.
960
00:48:37.960 --> 00:48:39.210
But yes, thank you so much
961
00:48:39.210 --> 00:48:41.114
for such a really interesting discussion
962
00:48:41.114 --> 00:48:43.530
about power and portraiture.
963
00:48:43.530 --> 00:48:46.170
Thank you everybody who joined in here on Zoom
964
00:48:46.170 --> 00:48:48.280
and also live on Facebook.
965
00:48:48.280 --> 00:48:51.090
We run these 15 Minutes of Frame quite frequently
966
00:48:51.090 --> 00:48:52.860
and we have another one coming up shortly.
967
00:48:52.860 --> 00:48:55.580
So please jump on our website, portrait.gov.au
968
00:48:55.580 --> 00:48:57.500
to get all the latest information.
969
00:48:57.500 --> 00:48:59.370
It's always great if you sign up for our emails
970
00:48:59.370 --> 00:49:01.920
or follow us on socials at portraitau,
971
00:49:01.920 --> 00:49:03.320
that way you won't miss out on anything
972
00:49:03.320 --> 00:49:05.270
that's coming down the pipeline.
973
00:49:05.270 --> 00:49:06.830
Thanks again, everyone for joining us
974
00:49:06.830 --> 00:49:07.820
from all over the world
975
00:49:07.820 --> 00:49:09.943
and we look forward to seeing you again soon.