Changing Face

Peter Monkman: Changing Face
12th January – 9th March at the Watts Gallery, Compton, Surrey

Director of Art Peter Monkman presents a one-man show, Changing Face, which questions the notion of a fixed identity of the face through portraits of people, young and old, from a variety of social and cultural backgrounds. The exhibition presents portraits of pupils from Charterhouse and Wrenn School, a Comprehensive in Northamptonshire. Archival photographs from Charterhouse also provide a source of inspiration, where the artist has appropriated them in new ways through painting and mixed-media.

    

Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery, opened the exhibition and praised Monkman’s ‘beautiful concentration on how we are’. He called the exhibition a future ‘Hall of Fame’ in the spirit of GF Watts’s original.

Close links between Charterhouse and the Watts Gallery have been strengthened by this exhibition, and many visits from schools in the area are being conducted.