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34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
Nottingham Trent University
Double-double-portraits of pairs of people
This exhibition showed 12 new portraits from the series “Double Double” including Stephen and Lola Frears (ppt:2&3) (1997 and 2012) and Charles and Lily-Clare Jencks (ppt:4&5) (1994 and 2011), alongside work from Andersen’s ‘Spaces and Places’ series.
Returning to fathers and daughters photographed 15 to 20 years previously these portraits of pairs of people explore both contemporary photographic art as critical commentary and the relations between the couples revealed through time-bound formal portraiture, building on her reputation for directly capturing the essence of the sitter, particularly in portraits of women (ppt:13).
Placing women with their fathers emphasises how seldom women occupy the same frame with men with equality and strength. Here is the impact of her work on the field of photography - building on relationships between her work and Nicholas Nixon’s recent photographs of the Brown Sisters, and Arbus’ photographs of couples and families. Andersen exploits the technological conditions of the image to challenge the “documentary” qualities of a photograph, informed by Brecht’s notion that the documentary image cannot reveal the conditions of modern reality.
Regina Moths invited Andersen to exhibit at Literatur Moths (ppt;16). This Gallery in the centre of Munich has won Best gallery and bookshop in Germany and Austria in 2010 and 2011. The opening attracted 60 and 300 visited daily, bringing 10 print sales to private collectors. Moths plans another exhibition for September 2014.
The work’s context includes an NPG commissioned portrait of Judith Weir for "Facing the Music" (PPT; 7-8), her column “Emily’s People” (ppt:9), NPG’s Great British Composers, from Elgar to Ades , 2010 (ppt;10); The Guardian, September 2011 (ppt;11); “The Jackson Twins”, The Economist, 2009, UK and Lithuania.(ppt;12); Marilyn French, “James Joyce Literary Supplement”, 2009 (ppt;13). Salt “n” Pepa for NME was in “She-Bop-a-Lula”, Strand Gallery, London. 2012 (ppt;14-15)
