The Dulwhich Picture Gallery: Nicola Green

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BP Portrait Award 2008

Nicola Green's portrait of Mark Pritchard has been selected for the 2008 BP Portrait Award showing now at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre from 4 February 2009 to 13 March 2009 following excellent reviews and high attendance figures from its showing at the Aberdeen Art Gallery, the Wolverhampton Art Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The East Wing Collection at The Courtauld

The portrait of the Late Joshua Compston is currently on view in the East Wing Collection at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Joshua Compston was at the Courtauld himself and set up the East Wing Collection, the first contemporary art exhibit at the Courtauld. The portrait is a tribute to him and his work.

There are on-going events and performances at the East Wing Collection. Details can be found on www.eastwing8.co.uk .

Blind Art Exhibition - New York October 2006

Permanent Collection - Touring Exhibition

Nicola Green's No 1 Hit - The Laughing Record is part of The Blind Art Exhibition touring the U.S in 2006

Podcasts

* Click here to listen to Martha Kearney interviewing Nicola Green on Woman's Hour May 2003
* Click here to listen to Claudia Hammond interviewing Nicola Green on Emotional Rollercoaster March 2004

House Slave - Field Slave

Touring exhibition "House Slave - Field Slave" October 2007 Dulwich Picture Gallery - exhibition and workshops in the Sackler Centre for Arts Education

Arthur Miller

Arthur Miller at The National Portrait Gallery

The Dulwhich Picture Gallery

Sunday, 10 February 2008

Nicola Green's recently completed painting celebrates Black History Month and commemorates the anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade. Called "House Slave - Field Slave" it will soon go to the newly opened International Slavery Museum in Liverpool in collaboration with Anti-Slavery International. Meanwhile the picture is on show in the Sackler Centre for Arts Education at the Dulwich Picture Gallery.

The picture reflects the fact that even though the slave trade was abolished 200 years ago, there are 12 million people in the world today who are still enslaved. As part of Dulwich's Education Programme, Nicola has been teaching children from Kingsdale Secondary School, and Southwark's Gifted and Talented pupils, at the Gallery.

The reason she painted feet and not faces in this particular picture is that slaves have very little sense of their own identity; slaves don't even own their own bodies. The feet also indicate the facelessness of saints and martyrs. Slaves are individuals whose life has little or no value. The tattoo on the contemporary sex-trafficked woman represents a woman without a sense of future. Nicola painted the picture with a gold leaf background, like an altarpiece or religious icon, the way saints or religious figures were painted in the past. The gold leaf, itself very valuable, shows that each life is of equal value, regardless of today's global racism and prejudices.

David Lammy, Nicola Green's husband and Minister for Skills in the new Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, said, "This project epitomises the social action through art philosophy which has been the driving force of the Education Department at Dulwich Picture Gallery since it was started by Gillian Wolfe, 24 years ago."

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