Official opening tomorrow for Model exhibition

THE Model is hosting Portrait Lab, a new exhibition running from this Saturday until Saturday, January 21. Curated by Emer McGarry, the exhibition is a thematic one that explores representation through the expanded field of portraiture.

The show poses a series of openended questions about the way in which portraits function to ask who is reflected in a public portrait collection and who is overlooked. It includes a range of Irish and international artworks, including Ugo Rondinone’s Thanx for Nothing – a film portrait of the poet John Giorno, Phil Collins’ poignant and resonant baghdad screentests, 2002, as well as Brian O’Doherty’s Portrait of Marcel Duchamp, a cardiogram reading taken in 1966.

The show also includes Clodagh Emoe’s We Are and Are Not, which was commissioned by The Model on the occasion of WB Yeats’ 150th anniversary, as well as a number of sculptural pieces by Marie Foley. Formal portraits by Geraldine O’Neill and Mick O’Dea will be on view alongside works by artists Brian Teeling, Breda Mayock and Amanda Dunsmore, all of which are focused on representing the lived experience of some of Ireland’s minority communities today.

The Model is delighted to launch The Sunset Belongs to You, a major multi-year project that sees them commission two of Ireland’s leading portrait painters, Geraldine O’Neill and Mick O’Dea, to create the individual oil portraits of 18 Sligo children.

In a reversal of the power structures of traditional portraiture, this artistic gesture has inclusivity, citizenship and diversity at its core and is underpinned by the idea that ‘you cannot be what you cannot see’. Named after a painting by Jack Butler Yeats, The Sunset Belongs to You will see the children’s portraits become part of The Niland Collection, where they will have a meaningful presence alongside portraits of politicians, activists, artists and other change-makers for generations to come.

The official unveiling of the finished portraits will be in autumn 2023. There will be Live Action Portrait Painting with public viewings of the live sittings to take place in the Black Box with artist Mick O’Dea during mid-term school break (Monday, October 31 to Sunday, November 6). This exhibition of portraits will run in November 2023. Running throughout all of the above there will be a weekly lecture series on Portraiture and a series of Family Days.

There will also be self-led activities for children and adults in a dedicated space in the building where people can make their own Portra. An official opening takes place tomorrow, Friday, at 6pm.