Moving Image www.moving-image.info Bargehouse
Oxo Tower Wharf Bargehouse Street South Bank London SE1 9PH, UK
Self-portraiture has a long artistic heritage, with devotees including Rembrandt the compulsive self-documentarian, Courbet styled himself a suave, long-haired Bohemian, and van Gogh, the fragile expressive, bandaged at the ear. Today, the genre belongs to anyone with a camera. Self-portraiture is the most democratic artistic medium available, not merely as a performative outlet for the self-styled social self, but also as a intimate route of catharsis for today’s artist.
Installed on two screens at the Moving Image art fair, National #Selfie Portrait Gallery will display a rotating series of short videos commissioned for the project, 30 seconds or less in length. The artists, including Bunny Rogers, Rollin Leonard, Jayson Musson (Hennessy Youngman), Yung Jake, Leslie Kulesh, Kim Asendorf, Ole Fach, and Jesse Darling, were selected specifically for their established practices, ranging from poetic internet confessionals to experimental, process-minded new media portraiture and humorous, subversive commentaries on exhibitionism.
National #Selfie Portrait Gallery explores the range of performativity, personality, authenticity, and expression inherent in the #selfie form, from the instant gratification of its creation to the popularity contests of its publication. The #selfie is as omnipresent as the smartphone and as diverse as humanity itself.
The artist videos will be sold for $500 each in a unique edition of one. Visitors will also be encouraged to contribute to the discussion with their own Instagram or Vine selfies, by tagging them #
