This one at Melbourne’s Dark Horse  Experiment crept up on us, but what a really great show – with a really intriguing theme!

“In 2009 Facebook was ranked the most used social network service in the world with 750 million users. Its success is in no small measure due to the fact that it provides a means by which users create a personal profile accessible to the public at large. Everyone can now be their own ‘celebrity’ according to their ‘self promoting’ abilities.

This relatively new medium sits in stark contrast to the image of celebrities rendered by the artist in paint, which has been one of the traditional means of personal promotion. Each artwork in this exhibition has a storyline created by the artist and a face to look at. It is, in the more traditional manner, its own reinterpretation of the profiling process that Facebook pursues.

The stories heave with empathy and insight for the subject of the work, all the time creating a new meaning for the viewer in the interpretation of the image and the words. The subjects are friends, self, fictitious and celebrities (Fr Bob Maguire and Barry Jones to name a few). Each artwork and story is the artist’s impression of the subject being expressed, allowing the viewer to judge the likeness and the ‘likeableness’ of the work after discovering the artist’s impulse to paint the subject through the storyline.”

With a really great array of artists, many Blender studio residents and friends of Dark Horse, its an intriguing take on the whole portrait exhibition standard, and should prove to be yet another great outing from a great gallery.

Who: Adrian Brierley (ADi), James Bonnici, Maxwell Burns-McRuvie, James Clayden, Luke Cornish (E.L.K), Drewfunk, Kristy Milliken, David Milne, Andrew Sibley, Dan Sibley and Regan Tamanui (Haha)
What: Face/look portrait exhibition
Where: Dark Horse Experiment, 110 Franklin St, Melbourne
When: Show opens tonight, 15th September from 6pm til 9pm and runs til

Check out the Dark Horse Experiment website or the Facebook event page for more info.