Artefacts and Art

An area that is often pushed to the periphery in discussions of moving image artefacts is that of art works and installations. The irony here is that this material is usually at the cutting edge in the production and presentation of screen related media and perhaps should be more at the forefront of our minds. The National Portrait Gallery possesses a number of examples of which this portrait of Susan Greenfield is one.

NPG 6526 Susan Adele Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield
by Tom Phillips courtesy of National Portrait Gallery, London

This portrait is composed of computer-processed drawings and video and uses moving image to re-interpret portraiture for the twenty-first century. Other ‘time-based’ portraits in the collection include Sam Taylor-Wood’s digital film of David Beckham. Other ‘objects’ relating to these works, such as documentation are also retained by the Gallery as part of the collection.