PORTRAITS of people with connections to the city feature in a new exhibition which opens at Southampton City Art Gallery this week.
Over 40 works from the National Portrait Gallery’s collection, together with paintings from Southampton’s art collections, will display celebrated figures who have links to the city including novelist Jane Austen and singer songwriter Craig David.
Spitfire designer R.J. Mitchell, TV presenter and naturalist Chris Packham, and former Saints and England striker Alan Shearer will also feature in Creative Connections Southampton, which runs from Friday (May 26) until Saturday September 30.
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Portraits of captain of the Titanic Edward John Smith, and the city’s first female mayor Lucia Foster Welch, as well as a recently acquired portrait of the Paralympic athlete Aaron Phipps, will also be included among others like explorer Sir Vivian Fuchs and jazz singer Sarah Jane Morris.
Drawing inspiration from both these nationally important collections, art students from Cantell School in Bassett collaborated with Hampshire-based artist Pete Codling to explore portraiture through drawing, using charcoal to capture people they chose to represent the city. Their new portraits will be displayed alongside the collections from both galleries.
In response to the project, Pete Codling also created a dramatic large-scale drawing called The Kinship, inspired by the local story of 4,000 child refugees from the Basque country arriving in Southampton on the steamship, SS Habana, in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. The Kinship was created as a response to Pablo Picasso’s famous 1937 painting Guernica. Depicted within the new artwork are pupils from the school - representing the history of Southampton and the future, and reflecting Southampton’s historic role as a place of refuge and Cantell School’s status as a ‘School of Sanctuary’.
A vibrant programme of free activities and events will also support the exhibition. This includes portrait drawing workshops for adults and children, an art summer school, talks from Southampton Archives about some of the figures portrayed in the exhibition and a screening of the film, The Guernica Children.
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