Upon arrival, I didn't really have a first impression of this place since it is kind of within the building of The National Gallery and looked the same. We headed right to the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize exhibit. I went in expecting amazing work and was somewhat disappointing. Most of the images looked like they came from a student exhibit with terrible lighting, off color printing or just flat out straight forward portraits with no back story (They all had a story but most were not conveyed through the image themselves. They needed the artist statement to survive) I really had trouble with the four overall winners. I only really enjoyed one which I believe won 2nd place, "Tic Tac & Tootsie" which portrayed two homeless twins who fell into homelessness at 19, then became addicted to prescription drugs and then into prostitution. I felt most of this from the image itself. Others that I thought were extremely strong in image and content were not even winners (Unless you consider just being chosen for the show as a 'winner') Overall, I'm glad I saw this exhibit and also glad it was only 2 pounds but just slightly disappointed from the quality of the images.
After this we walked around a bit before they closed and saw Jason Brooks piece "Sir Paul Nurse." This was amazing. It was a huge portrait from arcylic on linen which looked just like a photograph. I thought it was a Chuck Close but it wasn't, just resembled it. I really, really enjoyed this piece. I was also excited and disturbed to see "Self" by Marck Quinn. I don't know who would think to make your self portrait out of your own blood and it really creeps me out. It did remind me of something Damian Hurst would do though.
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