Portraits: Through The Looking Glass: Group Exhibition
Past exhibition
Overview
Portraits: Through The Looking Glass is a group exhibition curated by Annie Pereira, uniting paintings by twenty distinguished contemporary artists who seek to redefine our understanding of representation, perception, and the human experience. The exhibition title draws a parallel between portraiture and the looking glass to explore portraiture as a mirror to reality or a window into the unseen or imaginary.
The looking glass - a surface so reflective you can see yourself in it - is ubiquitous throughout history, science and art. Whether it's the reflective pool of water through which Narcissus falls in love with his self-image in Ovid's Greek poetry, or the tool for empirical self-assessment behind Rembrandt's portraits, the looking glass has become synonymous with even the painted image itself.
The influence of this reflective surface can be felt most profoundly in Lewis Carroll's novel 'Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There', where an inquisitive character named Alice enters a fantastical world by climbing through a mirror. After the book's publication in 1871, a looking glass came to also mean "the opposite of what is normal or expected." The transformative potential of the looking glass demonstrates how this famed surface came to transcend any single definition.
Now, our age of digital surfaces further confounds our understanding of how we see ourselves, people and the world around us, and indeed how we present our 'realities' to others. With these artistic, literary and technological references in mind, the title invites artists to consider how portraiture can bridge reality and fantasy, and, how the painted portrait functions today.
Works
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Bernard Buffet, Tête d’écorché , 1964
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Sophie-Yen Bretez, « It is born of A strange equation. Numbers adrift, A fleeting trace, It is the echo of time In the curve of my face. », 2025
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Roberta Booth, Seen What Happened Last Time They Started, 1975
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Yann Leto, Break up Letter, 2021/25
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Ian Cumberland, 14314 days, 2022
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Han Ji Min, Reader, 2025
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Han Ji Min, Egress, 2025
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Andrew Litten, Thinking Of Flight, 2025
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Andrew Litten, The Flesh (Blue Nude), 2025
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Owain Hunt, The Mirror's Edge , 2025
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Dannielle Hodson, Woolgathering, 2025 Sold
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Thierry Carrier, Untitled, 2021
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Thierry Carrier, Untitled, 2023
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Marcela Flórido, Maropa, 2019
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Katia Lifshin, The seed, 2021
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Katia Lifshin, Staged fight, 2021
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Cristina de Miguel, La Piconera, 2021
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Erkut Terliksiz, Knock at the Door, 2022
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Amélie Peace, I still bleed, 2021
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Máté Orr, Acting Out, 2024 Sold
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Casper Brindle, Light Glyph 6, 2021
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Jade Ching-Yuk NG, Jet, 2024
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Conrad Jon Godly, RENAISSANCE#42, 2024 Sold
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Celine Ali, Night Dreamer , 2024
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Kojo Marfo, Stranger #12, 2022
Installation Views
Press