Top Thank You for the Music (2011), oil on canvas, 40 by 50 cm. Above left Hasta La Vista (2011), oil on canvas, 40 by 50 cm. Above right Andy from Ipswich (2011), oil on canvas, plus hand-carved frame, 40 by 50 cm. Below left Dicky (2011), oil on canvas, plus hand-carved frame, 40 by 50 cm.
Who says portraiture is dead? If you’ve had enough of the yearly competition at the National Portrait Gallery, maybe it’s time to take a chance on Stuart Pearson Wright’s unforgiving eye, showing at London’s Riflemaker Gallery through February 15. This heritage space with leaning walls, rickety staircase and lived-in feel could be the perfect venue for edgy artists like Wright to show off their idea of beauty to a technologically-obsessed culture. The paintings, while firmly grounded in 2012 and a world of instant stardom, always hark back to dark classical canvases, and they certainly provoke the continuation of myth.—Stanley Moss, Travel Editor
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