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17/6/2009

BP Portrait Award

National Portrait Gallery, London

The BP Portrait Award is the most prestigious portrait competition in the world, promoting the very best in contemporary portrait painting. With a first prize of £25,000, the exhibition has proved to be the launch pad for the careers of a number of successful portrait artists.

From a record entry of over 1,900 artists, this year’s exhibition will present fifty-six selected portraits, including the three shortlisted artists - Annalisa Avancini for Manuel, Michael Gaskell for Tom and Peter Monkman for Changeling 2 - alongside the work of the BP Travel Award 2008 winner Emmanouil Bitsakis who visited China in celebration of the 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

From intimate and personal images of friends and family, such as Carey Clarke’s touching portrait of his daughter, Michelle and Ben Edge’s portrait of his grandfather, The Animal Handler, to revealing portraits of celebrity sitters such as Lee Fether’s portrait of Gail Porter, the exhibition presents a variety of styles and approaches that together illustrate the vitality of contemporary portrait painting.

Prize Winners

Changeling 2
by Peter Monkman, 2008
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The prize winners for the BP Portrait Award 2009 were announced at the Awards Ceremony on the 16 June 2009.
The First Prize was awarded to Peter Monkman for Changeling 2, part of a series of portraits of his daughter, Anna, at different stages of her life.

1220 x 900 mm
Monkman was shortlisted for the first time this year, having been included in the BP Portrait Award exhibition in 1999, 2001 and 2003. Currently Director of Art at Charterhouse School, Surrey, Monkman, 44, studied visual arts at the University of Lancaster, John Moores University Liverpool and the University of London. The shortlisted portrait is part of a series of portraits of his daughter exploring the concept of the changeling, a child substituted for another by stealth, often with an elf. ‘I challenge the fixed notion of an idealised image of childhood and substitute it for a more unsettling, complex, representation that exists in its own right as a painting.’ The initial ideas for this portrait came from photographic studies of Anna playing in woods in Brittany where the light had a magical quality.

Image: Georgie
by Mary Jane Ansell, 2009
© Mary Jane Ansell

National Portrait Gallery
st Martin's Place - London
Opening hours Saturday - Wednesday 10.00 - 18.00 Closure commences at 17.50
Thursdays and Fridays until 21.00 Closure commences at 20.50
Admission is free

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