Herbert Smith Freehills Portrait Award 2024 – National Portrait Gallery

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

27.07.2024

A portrait might be about many things. But it is often about a moment of human connection with someone and a relationship. The artist’s relationship with the sitter, or even himself or herself in a self-portrait. I was inspired by the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery where I used to volunteer just before the Covid Pandemic. I wanted to be – and still want to be – a portrait painter and and a portrait photographer. The human face, the human form, personality, psychology – all these are endlessly fascinating to me. Life gives us opportunities. Even if the people you care about the most won’t let you take them, sometimes you get lucky. Just yesterday, I took three portraits of one of my closest friends with my camera who has always resisted my entreaties. He was very pleased with the results as he thought himself very fine in them. I told him the truth: I see him as very good looking. So in my camera, he is good looking. I am comfortable with my sexuality: only women are attractive to me. So I don’t mind telling men that they are handsome if I think so. It is not often.

Here are a few notes about the work that some of my peers are doing because they actually have the time to do these things. I look at their work with a trace of jealousy because they have time, something that I don’t have, and willing sitters, people close to them. Again, something I do not have in my life.

Download the large-print exhibition guide here to see more detailed notes about each of the paintings that I discuss:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1iwsq97*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

The Last Portrait By Aleksandra Sokolova Oil on canvas, 2020

An old man. A veteran from the world wars. An artist. With a mug and a piece of bread. A commonplace scene of life elevated to art. The layers in the background build up in the humble kitchen scene in a series of three, giving a strong horizontal, structured feel to the painting. The man’s head is caught in the second and topmost of the three layers. Wisps of smoke emerge behind the head of this figure, who is imposing and strong, giving him perhaps an appearance of what? Heat, spirituality (he died while this was being painted – is it a spirit photograph that is capturing his soul departing)? A contrast to his strength with his paunch? What does he signify? Consumption, as he is eating? A moment of repose? But there is movement coming or which has just finished. The glass is just on the edge of the table – either he has just put it back or is just about to pick it up. Time is ambiguously presented: a snapshot in either the immediate before or the immediate future.

Anna By Jack Freeman Oil on canvas, 2023

Her black eyes. But more than that, her black hair which dominates the image for me. The hair of the one that you love. Wild and untamed on the pillow in the bed and seen from above. Twisting about in its full richness like a dark forest above her head. Like a mermaid in the water. The hair of the goddess. In Hindu mythology, when Draupadi was dishonoured, she vowed to keep her hair untamed until she bathed it in the blood of her oppressor. One of her husbands vowed to drink the oppressor’s blood, a terrible oath. The hair of revenge. Shiva, the god of destruction and creation, the Lord of the Dance, his hair was also unkempt and powerful and contained the waters, the Ganges that descended from heaven. Why the water? Why think of it? She is holding a cup. She seems suspended in water, with that crowning glory of hair and its strength. The hair of the woman that you love.

Stereo (diptych) By Peter Davis Acrylic on canvas, 2023

A study in how colour creates unconscious meaning and prejudice. Two studies of a Muslim woman side to side, one in black clothes and another in white, with hijabs in both. The background is the opposite colour to the clothes in both cases. In black clothes, she appears more scarred. In white clothes, she does appear different. But what is the difference when you look at the images side by side? The difference is that when you associate ethnic minorities with black, black as it contrasts with the whiteness that is our surrounding and our culture, then in this culture, we appear scarred. The eyes appear to have no life or soul in them in the black costume, whereas they appear to have more life in the white costume. In the white costume, the face seems friendlier. There is an exposure of how taking on whiteness for an ethnic minority is what makes them palatable in this society. And the lesson? The lesson in the choice. Because I have chosen to take the blackness. If not in clothes, in my behaviour. And, in one context that I am in, many people call me by the name of one of the black men that work there. Because they recognise the blackness in me, even though I am Asian.

Double Portrait of Clara By Michael Slusakowicz Oil on canvas, 2021

A woman decides between two university courses. She becomes two people, one whose shoulder supports the other’s head. But what is the message here? An idea of self support? Or isn’t this about a woman’s decision making process, when she becomes two people because the decision will be life altering. She can either take the decision in which she is the support or the supported. Isn’t this about a woman’s career choice and whether she wants to make enough money to be ‘independent’ or whether she will need someone to look after her? Since in this society, education just means money to most people?

The supported woman wears blue and seems depressed, tired, languid. Because this is how this society sees the dependent. But look again at the woman that is supporting. She looks away from who she supports coldly, a glaring contrast to the warm colours of yellow and red that she is wearing. And she is blue in the face too. Ultimately, whatever the decision that is going to be made, both of the women are blue and seem depressed. At the moment of greatest excitement in life, when you are forging the future, the women are blue. Because one decision perhaps, will be to have wealth but not happiness in what you do. And the other decision will be to have the work but not the reward. The bind that informs all our choices for education in this kind of society.

Painting here:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1fkkavn*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

Alain at Kew By Carl Randall Oil on canvas, 2022

The floral shirt integrates the man into the palm house at Kew Gardens. The requirement of the moment is to be integrated into nature. However, he holds a flower that droops downwards – the flowers are dying. They need their protector, they need help like the blooming flowers in the palm house that they are contrasted to. He is old, with white hair. The protection is in the hands of the older generation. The children do not have the resources. But behind, there are all youngsters walking around the Gardens: one day they will be in a position to protect because they will have the resources. It is just a matter of time.

Gerard in Hospice By Jackie Anderson Oil on cotton, 2023

A memorial to a dying husband by a loving wife. Minimalistic. Done in a wash of brown, delicate and virtuoso like a Da Vinci drawing. Simple, elegant. Hugely impactful. In the style of the succinct, in the style of brevity. The silence of real grief behind it, the restrained emotion, the guarded feelings that would burst out and consume everything if they could.

Jacqueline with Still Life By Antony Williams Tempera on board, 2020

A portrait of desire, a nude of a beautiful woman. The one painting that seemed to be most about desire. And desire with a mystery. The face, the artist says, is mysterious. And the symbolism is mysterious. The figure is between a fan and a heater – extremes of temperature compete with each other on either side. What does this say about the body in the middle which the fan is to cool or the heater to heat? And don’t we know that heat and cold are how we think about desire and lust? Is this a comment about art and the nude? That we have to reach a medium between lust and cool observation when we are representing our desire?

The still life that is compared and contrasted to the naked body below. A model of a dinosaur, a model of two houses. A dinosaur living in modern times? Sublime nature which towers above human built design and homes? Is the idea of nature contrasting and comparing with the woman ‘in a state of nature’ in the nude? There is a cross at the base of the wooden table – introducing the iconography of the wooden cross to complicate things. A resonance of Christ’s nakedness on the cross? Woman as victim and martyr?

Painting here:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1fkkavn*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

The Most Important Thing in the World By Stephen Leho Oil on canvas, 2020

A woman unpacking a home-made mobile after a mental strain. The face lost in the task. The strangeness of the moment as she destroys what is built, undoes what is done. Perhaps a comment upon the craziness of attention in this society – the trivial things that we bestow our attention on, their ultimate meaninglessness. But also an image of hope: because, hopefully, she will become better. And bestow her attention onto something that she should be bestowing it upon. Something productive and not destructive.

I’ll Never Not Miss You By Laura Carey Oil on canvas, 2023

The emotions as folds and cloth which covers the body of the person we bestow the emotions onto, making them impossible to see as they are – the human condition.

Quoted from the exhibition catalogue.

Laura Carey painted her mother enveloped in a bright red blanket during an afternoon sleep brought on by her chemotherapy treatment. She explains: ‘Her blanket is my love, my anger, hopelessness, grief as well as her cancer all at once.’

Self-Portrait at Low Tide By Alex Tzavaras Oil on linen, 2023

A modern version of Munch’s ‘The Scream’ it appeared to me, with the man in the hoodie that sees hope in the beautiful sky reflected in the sand after a mental illness. We can see the sky behind him in its original state. Not what he sees. This is the thing that got me in the painting – you can’t see the hope in it. You can’t see his hope. What instigates his hope is there up in the sky. But the medium between the sky and us and him, that is not there. Why not? What is this saying about hope and how we can see it? Is it saying that you need a magical moment and unity with nature and existence to have hope? A moment that can’t be shared with others? Is it a comment upon the individualistic nature of hope? That it can only be created in an individual and not in a society, that it can’t be shared? That it is a moment of individual, private psychology?

Or am I reading this completely wrong? Is the idea that hope is always there behind us, following us around. That we just need to see it somewhere? Where is not important?

Maybe the idea is that hope is not really there. There is just its illusion. It is built upon sand, to quote the bible. Sand is not steady. Perhaps the mental illness and the darkness is still there:

life cries

her eyes fill with tears

that never fall

and they hide

for us to slip on

Before it’s Ruined (or an Unrealized Mean Side) By Rebecca Orcutt Oil on canvas, 2020

A woman. An oversized coat. A web. Perhaps an idea of weaving since the textiles are so conspicuous and perhaps an allusion to the Greek myth about the spider’s web and weaving as a competition between Arachne and Athena. If so, about woman’s transformation into nature and the fragility of nature, since the web goes across her forehead and seems to be united with her body as well as her clothes which it is also overlapping against (reinforcing the idea of weaving and the web, the idea of textiles). It could be the wish to be integrated into nature as woman becomes spider but also the desire not to be, as the title suggests that the web is to be torn by the model in the painting, that the work of weaving is to be undone (as traditional roles for femininity as woman weaving are resisted?) An ambiguous and mysterious piece of work.

Painting here:

https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2024/hsf-portrait-award/?_gl=1*1fkkavn*_up*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjwtZK1BhDuARIsAAy2VzuaYunZFb3b8wkSJLfhvFBWgUMRsai66b1R-HwyfW5n0T1vjVXUCJ0aAtAhEALw_wcB

NAOMI: In Fashion Exhibition

13.07.2024

Dr. Suneel Mehmi

I did not pay attention to fashion when I was a child. I never read any newspapers or watched the news until I had my Cambridge interview coming up when I was seventeen and I was told I had to start doing that because no one had ever told me to read a newspaper before. I was not exposed to Western culture except in pop music, largely American TV shows and commercial films. So, the first moment I will always remember of Naomi Campbell is in a music video: Michael Jackson’s ‘In the Closet’ in 1992 when I was ten years old. Despite all the allegations and the overtly sexual nature of the song which sometimes threaten to spoil the delight of the music and singing, this is one of my favourite songs by Michael Jackson whose music I grew up with as a small boy. I was dazzled by Naomi, her perfect looks and her statuesque body in this song, her exhilarating dance moves. The curves of her impossibly long legs. She was the kind of woman I had never seen before in my life, me who lived outside of London in a white area with very little diversity. She was the kind of woman that made you notice that there were women in the world. She did not look like she was real. Looking at her was like looking at a different, glamorous, ideal world.

The next moment with Naomi is again something that I would never forget my whole life. The year was 1994. Now, I was twelve years old. We were watching Top of the Pops which I watched regularly because I have always loved singing for as long as I can remember. Suddenly, Naomi Campbell came onto the screen in an Indian sari. I had watched Hindi song and dance routines with women in saris my whole life in Hindi films (‘Bollywood’ – a term I don’t like to use because it is so derivative of Western cinema and Hollywood). But here, instead of the fair skinned Indian actresses that I had always seen, who were usually petite and curvaceous, here was a statuesque, dark skinned woman in Indian dress. It was an unexpected, dazzling, amazing sight. Back then, you didn’t really see women in saris singing songs on Top of the Pops. There wasn’t diversity on British television (has anything really changed there?) The performance was absolutely unique. And Naomi was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen in my entire life and looked even more beautiful in the sari, because that was from our culture.

You can see this performance here:

That moment is how I will always remember Naomi Campbell. She often wears saris. Because her ethos in fashion is to promote diversity and to celebrate the style that Western fashion has ignored – India and Africa.

As you can imagine, my visit to the Naomi Campbell exhibit at the Victoria and Albert museum was a trip down memory lane, with perhaps one of the most remarkably beautiful women that had made an impact upon me as I was entering puberty. I got a chance to see what I had not seen at the time – Naomi walking on the catwalk, Naomi the activist. Naomi on the magazine covers. I had only known her as a dancer and a singer. Now, I finally got to see what she was as a supermodel.

I was wary of these celebrity exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert museum before. That is because I was not really a fan of any of the celebrities that they were showing. Now, here I was, a fan of the exquisite beauty of Naomi Campbell. The exhibition made you feel close to her passage to fame and to her. It showed you the life that she was living, the clothes that she wore, the people who she was friends with. The exhibition enhanced the sense of connection you feel to remarkable people, the basking in the glory of their achievement that makes you rekindle the love you feel for your idols. More than this, the exhibition showed you the impact that your idols made on the world around them at the time, the fans that shared your passion for this amazing human being.

In the exhibition, they said that Naomi was seen as being able to wear any kind of fashion costume and make it look good, to pull it off. That wonderful athletic dancer’s body that she has, the imposing tallness, the statuesque quality, it works on everything. Whatever she wears looks dynamic and fluid, and, in fact, many of her clothes were figure-hugging. You could sense the powerful quality of being able to wear anything when you looked at the clothes on the mannequins. The clothes, beautiful as they were, looked lifeless without her in them. She exuded power and confidence, the energy of the noble beauty that she has in her appearance and within her. The style.

People often remark on my clothes. But some of them are very cheap clothes from market stalls and most of them have been bought at a sale because no one else wanted them, or could wear them. It is not the clothes themselves that make them look good. It is the body. I tell people this whether they believe me or not – the clothes look good because I am within them and I have absolute confidence in myself, despite being short, thin and not being particularly broad. Someone once told me that I look good in anything and a professional male model half my age once told me that he wanted to look like me and dress like me when he was my age. Naomi Campbell had even more of this quality of super confidence than me, perhaps more than anyone else. And with her, she has the kind of body that only a supermodel can have. Whether it is posture, gesture on the face, the apparent, easy athleticism of the body, or some kind of unconscious signification, perhaps to do with the connotations of ethnicity in a white universe, she has the body of power and visual display.

The exhibition was spectacular in every sense. And the appeal of it was that women want to imitate the power and confidence that Naomi has. There was a catwalk where you could walk like Naomi, become her in a sense. Watch yourself in a video as you become her. She is a role model for so many women and for women that are non-white, proof that you can rise to the absolute top despite prejudice, racism and a lack of real diversity in this society. However, I did note to myself how she was able to achieve this success: by being absolutely extraordinary. By being one of the most beautiful people alive. By having that air of absolute confidence, dynamism, power. These qualities are rare and not easy to replicate. And they show you how ethnic minorities have to achieve this level of success in this society: by being a million times more talented than white people, this being the ‘fairness’ and ‘meritocracy’ of this society.

The Kew Gardens Archive Brought to Life: The SS Great Britain Wardian Cases Exhibition at the RHS Flower Show at Hampton Court

11.07.2024
Dr. Suneel Mehmi

There were many unique characteristics of the RHS Flower Show at Hampton Court which I observed as a novice to the event. The variety of our relationships to plants and flowers in art, culture and food. The friendliness of the people there. The almost overwhelming enthusiasm. One such characteristic was that they had plant porters and also that many of the public that did without the plant porters were struggling with the structures of the plants as they flowed within the spaces. The plant structures – so beautiful to behold and so suitable to evolution and adaptation – seemed particularly unwieldy and cumbersome, and their fragility in transit was worrying. I was particularly surprised that at the very start of the morning, people were buying the plants so that they had to carry them around for the whole event, although I suppose that was so that they could get their first choice.

It was in this context that I came across the SS Great Britain Wardian Cases Exhibition. I had already seen the Wardian case at Kew Gardens for our volunteer training there, so it was not an unfamiliar sight, and I even knew some of the history behind this construction. The Wardian case is what I would describe as a life box that protects plants in a microclimate where they only need to be watered once during a two-month crossing.

Something akin to a miniature Victorian glasshouse, although made out of wood, the Wardian case has been described as a revolution in the long distance transportation of plants. Patently, the construction was where the sciences of botany and biology found their sanctuary and spring as the living plants could be studied in Europe rather than grown from seeds in a foreign land. Again, the case allowed the transportation of economically important plants and is thus one of the most significant relics in the history of modern capitalism and global development. One of the most noteworthy connections with Kew gardens is with the exportation of seedlings from our glasshouses to Ceylon and Malaya in the 1870s to begin the rubber plantations. However, Kew Gardens also habitually used Wardian cases to transport plants until 1962.

The display at the RHS Flower show was a preview of the exhibition at the SS Great Britain which is Bristol’s number one visitor attraction. On the ship’s weather deck, six reconstructed Wardian cases are on display for visitors to explore. Each is a replica of the last surviving ship-board example designs which are to be found in the Kew Gardens archive. Based on research from the Brunel Institute, studies of the ship’s cargo manifests, each case is planted with a true-to-life ‘order’. The cases will celebrate the inbound and outbound plant species that the ship transported across the world between 1859 and 1875. The exhibition highlights the role of steamships in the transportation of plants and the making of the modern world.

Along with the exhibition of the Wardian cases, there is other horticultural interest. There is a botany-themed ‘discovery talk’ and horticultural workshops. A ‘botanist’s cabin’ has also been added to the ship’s museum in which you are to become immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of life onboard – a lived experience and introduction to the important work and research of Victorian botanists and ‘plant hunters’.

The exhibition at the RHS Flower Show was an exciting and stimulating moment in time travel to a monumental period in the history of plants and in the makings of a globalised world. Looking at those fairly small boxes with such a colossal impact was a message that just a little thought and a few materials can change reality. The resourcefulness and ingenuity of the human mind can reshape everything. As we try to combat the mass extinction event that is threatening all plant life and diversity, the Wardian case stands as a symbol that improvement can be wrought to transform botany, biology, the life sciences – and the future. And the Wardian case is also a symbol of connection across the world through transport. The future is about more connection across cultures through science and study enabled through constructions like the Wardian case. And more connections with Kew Gardens, its science and its archives and knowledge to inspire the understanding of this living planet and the foundations on which it has been built.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to the SS Great Britain for allowing me to share the photographs and especially to Emily France there who was so helpful with the research and the permissions.

RHS Flower Show Thurs 4 July 2024 – Suneel’s Photographs

No one understands your heart. No one understands your words. No one understands your actions. But people think they understand your photographs.

The day:

Bus into the Flower show: Three women my age from outside London came and sat next to me on the bus and started talking to me and joking around with me. Proving that everyone outside of London is still friendly.
Walking around the place where they were selling all the flowers. An inspiring experience. People kept on complimenting me on my clothes – it was at least twenty people, mostly women. And the women gardeners all approached me and talked to me themselves. Women kept on talking to me all day.
However, I had work to do (and what was I going to do talking to women that live outside of London?). It was a case of mixing pleasure with business. Or, rather, pleasure with pleasure. Because my obsession is writing. I went to all of the art stores because I write for a website about plant art. So I collected lots of contacts and got permission to use their artwork for the site. There is a huge amount of stuff to get through.
I skipped lunch. I thought I could treat myself on my holiday to an expensive lunch. I am not used to luxury when that money could be used for something useful. I stayed hungry the whole day and survived off two chocolate bars and water (two Lindt chocolate bars for £1.80).
Hampton Court Palace Gardens towards the end before one final push to get some good photographs inside again.
I went on the Ferry back to the station to get a boat ride in. There was some miscommunication about a buoy a boat had ran into – a young girl thought it was a boy and not a buoy which everyone found amusing.
I walked into town afterwards to look around and went into a last art gallery with a daughter and father duo of artists. He was a carver, she was a painter. I got permission from her to use her work and to write about it for the website.
I was going to go straight home and eat but I ended up helping a sick person on the tube that was throwing up in the bins. It is my duty to help people – the philosophy of the religion I was raised in. No one else was helping him and he needed help. I ran to get someone even though they took their time to walk to him and get him assistance. I had to stay with him for a while.
Which meant that I ended up eating a take out in London before I went home.