HEDLEY ROBERTS : OTHER PORTRAITS

10 Mar-29 Apr 2017

Overview

If I told Him: A Completed Portrait of Picasso, Gertrude Stein, 1924. A poem written by Gertrude Stein while looking at a portrait of Napoleon I, by Picasso. When Gertrude Stein was presented with her finished portrait by Picasso; a work which he had begun in 1905, abandoned, then returned to it again in 1906, she commented that it looked nothing like her, Picasso replied that it was what she would become. Between 2014 and 2017 Hedley Roberts produced a series of ‘non-portraits’ of lovers, friends, family, acquaintances and strangers. Hedley Roberts begins by working from photographic collages using source materials from social media sites or images sent to him by friends. Sometimes he begins with a photographic image of someone that he wishes to portray, more usually he begins with a collaged image or photograph of someone who looks similar to his subject. Occasionally he just begins.