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Marty St James at the Redtory : [Solo exhibition: photo, video and drawings]

This was an invited international solo exhibition at the Iron Curtain Gallery in the Redtory art district of Guangzhou, China, organized by Redtory Culture & Art Organization and the Consulate General of the British Embassy in Guangzhou (http://www.redtory.com.cn/english/board_content.php?id=113). The gallery is a publicly funded space. The show formed part of the celebration of UK NOW, cultural programme in China (Apr – Nov 2012), with catalogue, press, TV and Internet interviews. (http://www.shenzhenparty.com/guangzhou/uk-now-bringing-uk-arts-culture-china-2012)

This exhibition of drawings, two videos and two sequential photographic works took the traditional genre of portraiture and explored it in a multi-faceted and multi media way. The exhibition’s aim was to present relationships between movement and stasis, revealing the process from conception via pencil on paper through sequential photography and on to the actual projected portraits in motion.

The drawings selected were approached as types of musical ‘scores’ but in this case notated specifically as potential portraits in motion. They signified movement and time passing and, by being circular, they reflected a clock or the planets revolving. The exhibition enabled a new public in China unfamiliar with contemporary western departures in portrait representation to experience the forms of the genre in digital print, photography, drawing and video. Particular emphasis was given to the concept of performance in portrait with each work mapping the genre within an expanded field of portraiture that unfolds over time.

Central to the works’ purpose was the systematic examination of traditional portraiture, its structures, forms, and presentations, and how new technology changes our approach and understanding of portraiture. As a result, new streams of potential portraiture have been examined, produced and presented.