Haunting busts of homeless form NAC show
Bevan Ramsay’s Lesser Gods exhibition opens Friday and continues until August
For artist Bevan Ramsay, a paint brush wasn’t enough to depict homelessness in New York City. He wanted viewers to see beyond the canvas.
So he started talking to them. Listening to their stories, gaining their trust. And with their approval, he created a series of busts showing the humanity so often overlooked by the city’s bustling middle class.
If they can’t see them on the streets, perhaps they’ll see them in an art gallery. His exhibition Lesser Gods opens at Niagara Artists Centre Friday and runs until Aug. 3.
“I think a three-dimensional portrait has a bit more immediacy to it than a two-dimensional portrait, regardless of how well they’re executed,” says the Montreal-born artist who now lives in Brooklyn.
Consisting of one woman and six men, the busts were created by Ramsay with fine, white statuary Hydrocal plaster and then mounted on mahogany bases. They stem solely from photos he took of people living on the streets. Each piece took about three weeks to finish.
The detail stirs emotions people might not get from a simple painting, he says. Viewers are looking at a life-size replica of someone real, someone on the streets.
“To some degree, you’re looking at the piece of work. But to some degree, you also have the sense of looking at the subject directly … even though you’re not looking at them directly.”
Ramsay will begin installing the work at NAC on Wednesday. An opening reception will be held Friday at 7 p.m.
Ramsay has toured the show a handful of times and is always curious over the reaction it elicits. One reaction he hasn’t experienced, however: The actual subjects.
“None of the subjects have seen their portraits,” he says. “We talked about staying in touch and I have contact information for them, but you can imagine … they’ve got bigger fish to fry.
“I’ve tried, but I haven’t managed to re-establish contact with any of them.”