Julie Bennett: Portraits for NHS Heroes

Julie Bennett builds on the traditions of portraiture to reappropriate mass-mediated images into gestural paintings. Her work draws from a range of popular cultural sources and critically engages with the discourse surrounding the cult of celebrity in contemporary society.

"During the lockdown, I volunteered to paint portraits of frontline NHS workers as part of a social media project, #portraitsfornhsheroes, the brainchild of Oxford artist, Tom Croft. Croft wanted to lift the spirit of an NHS staff member by offering, via his Instagram account, to paint for free, a portrait of the first NHS worker who contacted him. Croft was overwhelmed with the reaction he received, with literally hundreds of NHS workers contacting him, so he put a call-out to professional and amateur artists to volunteer their skills.

I offered to make portraits for the project via my Instagram and received requests from fifteen frontline NHS staff in less than 2 hours. It was quite overwhelming to be contacted by so many of these brave NHS individuals who liked my work. I set myself the challenge to paint twelve of the people who got in contact. All completed portraits are currently on public display in Maidenhead's Nicholsons shopping centre and will hopefully move to a central London location later on. All paintings will be gifted to the subjects once the NHS exhibitions come to a close."

You can see more images from the project on Julie's website.

CuratorSpace are currently featuring articles by artists, curators and organisations who want to share their experiences of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, whether that is artists using their practice as a way of exploring new boundaries of isolation, or as a way to connect more broadly with their communities. We are also interested in hearing from curators and organisations who are offering support to artists and audiences during this time.

Contact us at louise@curatorspace.com to share your story.
 

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