Judging The Bp Portrait Award 2012 - Gus casely - Hayford
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It was a wonderful experience judging this competition, really uplifting and to see a
lot of artists, many of whom were obviously young, many obviously who were experienced,
but all approaching portraiture with real vigour and great variety, I just felt re-enthused
by art and the idea of what a portrait can be.
You sit down, two thousand works pass by your eyes and one might imagine that that might
be a boring or repetitive process, but far from it. You can feel the adrenaline running
through your body. I was hoping that what would come out of the process would be a diverse
range of different kinds of images, both in terms of image and also of technique. Walking
in on the very first day and just seeing the work and just really thinking again about
the possibilities that there are when an artist approaches a canvas and tries to render a
picture of another individual upon it, it just was quite wonderful and it gives you
a sense of just how healthy portrait-making is at this time.
I actually sat back at the end of the process and looked at the works that were selected
and I felt a real deep sense of pride, both in the process of the selection but also in
the institution, the National Portrait Gallery, and it actually creating a platform for what
is really fundamentally terrific work. It just needs to be celebrated more, portraiture.
