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The two faces of Nick Serota: Steve McQueen's portrait of Arts Council supremo will go on show at London's National Portrait Gallery

The Art Newspaper
11 April 2023
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Sir Nicholas Serota by Sir Steve McQueen (2022) © Steve McQueen. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Richard Ivey.

Sir Nicholas Serota by Sir Steve McQueen (2022) © Steve McQueen. Courtesy the artist, Thomas Dane Gallery and Marian Goodman Gallery. Photo: Richard Ivey.

The Turner prizewinner Steve McQueen is making his presence felt in London with his must-see searing Grenfell film at the Serpentine Galleries (until 10 May). McQueen will also make a splash in June with a new portrait of the former Tate director and Arts Council England chair, Nicholas Serota, due to go on show in the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery. The work is the first by McQueen to enter the gallery’s collection. The eye-catching portrait, which shows Serota in a double-exposure image with two faces, was commissioned with support from Scott Collins, the managing director of the equity firm Summit Partners, in partnership with Outset Contemporary Art Fund.“This portrait by Steve McQueen makes reference to the history of still photography and its intersection with cinema and film, but as ever in his work, Steve adds new language to that tradition, choosing to represent me in a way that quite literally shows more than one side,” Serota says in a statement. The work, which will hang in the gallery’s Weston Wing nods to Futurist art of the early 20th century (Umberto Boccioni made a similar two-faced picture around 1911 called Ritratto polifisiognomico di Umberto Boccioni).

DiarySteve McQueenNicholas SerotaNational Portrait Gallery
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