The International Portrait Gallery Opens!

 Emile Kelly's pop up portrait gallery opened today, we've got the coffee machine going and we are hoping to entice people in out of the rain! The new space looks great and Emile set up looks fantastic. 

 The International Portrait Gallery at Hotel Elephant is a pop up portrait studio and project space, running for the next four weeks. Through the IPG Emile will be offering photographic portraits as digital files to the local community, free of charge and obligation, in the hope of establishing collaborative relationships with willing individuals. These individuals will become the subjects of his photography-based artwork, which is concerned with globalisation and its effects on community and identity in Elephant & Castle.  

 The main aim of the project is to create an engaging and compelling artwork, framing this pocket of South East London in a post-colonial, globalised context, whilst also giving something to the community in the process. Collaboration between the subjects and Emile is a central strategy for two reasons: first, he believe's people should play a part in their own representation; this is often missing from photographic work that makes community its subject. Second, it opens up the process to potentially new and unexpected possibilities, both aesthetic and in terms of content.