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From: Portrait of the Artist Category: Art Date: 21 June 2009 Time: 04:21 PM Review: This show of portraits is shit. Really really lifeless and dead as a portrait competition can be. WHY? because competitions for specific reactionary types of art always get what they request. Who the hell wants a portrait, the well off with small minded taste, a bit realistic, a bit arty. A fairly awful percentage are lovingly painted blown up photos, every pore pored over. They betray only the faint whiff of a desperate artist in their bedroom constructing a meticulous matchstick model. There are few sort of twee attempts to be different, a drip here, an unfinished bit there. The standards that operate here, the conformity, is of people who don't understand art and want to see something that looks a bit like a painting or a bit like a photograph, regardless that no trace of the sitters aliveness remains, let alone the beauty of painting. There is not one portrait here that makes you think of anything but a portrait. Not one painting of a person.