Artists Include: Tashi Columbro, Olaf Hajek, Alexey Kondakov, Mauro Llanas, Daria Petrilli, Sally Ryan, and Ben Ryan

Portraiture remains a primary site of inquiry among these contemporary artists. To study the face is not just to capture a likeness, but to consider how we see one another, how we recognise each other, and how we come to understand who someone is.

The present moment gives this inquiry renewed urgency. In the wake of what has been widely described as a global epidemic of loneliness, marked by reduced social contact, rising psychological distress, and a decline in perceived connection and wellbeing, the face returns as a critical site of presence and relation.

Yet our relationship to the face is undergoing a strange transformation, passing through the uncanny valley of AI, deepfakes, virtual reality, digital filters, and the latest in cosmetic procedures. No longer a stable or entirely trustworthy marker of identity, it can be altered, reproduced, and reimagined. Technology has never been so life-like, nor so deeply embedded in our lives, and what we see is not always real.

At the same time, identity itself is shifting. Gender and appearance are increasingly fluid, performative, and androgynous, while social and political frameworks still reduce identity to surface-level traits such as race or physiognomy. This exhibition invites a more expansive view, one that understands identity as layered, complex, and in flux.

Perhaps a show about portraiture and the human face today is also asking: why face the present at all, when it so often feels hostile, brutal, and irrational? Is it even possible? Or is it something we can only do through the many faces that reflect it?
To study the face today is not only to look at others, but to reconsider the frameworks through which recognition becomes possible and to ask what it means to see, and to be seen.