National Portrait Gallery Exhibition

Creative Connections opened at National Portrait Gallery on 4 October 2017 and will run all the way through to 25 February 2018. It’s so lovely to have an exhibition on for a good length of time, you feel like you’re working even when you’re not!

For the opening, the Nottingham Contemporary team and Farnborough Academy Students all came down and spent the day in London.

For the first part, we had presentations from participants in the lecture theatre, followed by a preview of the work.

The hang space was much smaller than at Nottingham Contemporary but had a prominent position at the top of the stairs and the opportunity to see some of the films that were made throughout the project.

The highlight was seeing Paul Irons talking about the portrait of his father, Eric Irons, that the National Portrait Gallery acquired and displayed as part of the exhibition. Eric Irons was the first Black British Magistrate and campaigner for equal rights, who lived on the Clifton Estate, Nottingham.