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Pets of all types take over the National Portrait Gallery
3 November 2016
Archived media releases 2016
It is not every day that a national gallery turns its walls over to the animal companions that bring unconditional love and joy to their owners but this summer we have opened the doors to 15 contemporary artists with very different ways of depicting our furry, feathered and scaled pets.
Explore The Popular Pet Show
The artists and their furry friends
General content
Curator, Sarah Engledow, introduces the artists and the animals in The Popular Pet Show.
NPPP 2011 exhibition essay
General content
Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2011 Prize.
The more things change...
NPPP 2017 exhibition essay
General content
Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2017 Prize.
Everybody, look serious
NPPP 2014 exhibition essay
General content
Dr Sarah Engledow, National Photographic Portrait Prize judge and curator, introduces the 2014 Prize.
Some prime ministers
General content
Sarah Engledow explores the history of the prime ministers and artists featured in the exhibition.
Ken Done
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With a mum who was married to a tradie, you’d think it a fair chance that the baby Jesus would have grown up with a dog in the house.
Arcadia: Sound of the sea
Exhibition introduction
General content
One night in the spring of 1970 in an old house in Whale Beach, north of Sydney, John Witzig, Albe Falzon and David Elfick put together the first issue of Tracks, playing Neil Young’s album Harvest over and over again as they pasted up galleys of type.
Jude Rae
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Jude Rae’s high reputation rests on her austere, cerebral still lifes of gas canisters, electric jugs and jars, which she groups and rearranges for paintings that catch their difficult curves and reflections. Her self-portrait’s likewise thoughtfully composed.
Rick Amor: 21 Portraits
General content
Sarah Engledow chronicles Rick Amor's work and accomplishments in this extensive essay in conjunction with the exhibition Rick Amor: 21 Portraits.
Nicholas Harding: 28 Portraits
Exhibition essay
General content
Sarah Engledow looks at three decades of Nicholas Harding's portraiture.
Shen Jiawei
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Shen Jiawei was born in China. During the Cultural Revolution he laboured in the Great Northern Wilderness, but even as he worked there, he gained recognition as an artist.
Lucy Culliton
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Most well-regarded pictures of chickens show them dead. A reliable way to tell if a chicken in a painting is dead is to check if it’s hanging upside down, because unlike, say, cockatoos, chickens don’t practise inversion for enjoyment in life.
Davida Allen
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Going around a gallery with a child, we point to a painting of a dog and brightly ask ‘What’s that?’ If they don’t say ‘A dog’, we tell them that’s what it is. We don’t say it’s a shape inscribed by an artist that’s popularly understood to signify a dog. That’d only serve to foster a smarty-pants.
Robyn Sweaney
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Robyn's parents had two terriers, Wuff and Snuff. In spite of Snuff’s ominous name and a couple of close shaves – once, he jumped out of a moving car, and another time, on a long road trip, he was accidentally left behind at a petrol station – he outlived Wuff.
Nicholas Harding
Explore The Popular Pet Show
Over the years the young Nicholas Harding got his hands on various mice and guinea pigs, but they served mainly to illustrate the concept of mortality.