JOnathan Yeo POrtraits at THE LOWRY, greater MANCHESTER
15th march 2014 - 29th june 2014
Following the success of 'Jonathan Yeo Portraits' at the National Portrait Gallery in London, Jonathan Yeo's next show at The Lowry in Salford featured many of the same works, but included several never-before-seen portraits of the actor Maxine Peake, poet John Cooper Clarke and actor Kristin Scott Thomas. It also included a number of pieces from his other bodies of work, his collage and surgery series; the latter depicting several stages of cosmetic surgery in his before-and-after diptychs and the former consisting of satirical portraits made from snippets of pornographic magazines. Another room had a salon hang of drawings, which bought the total number of works in the show to almost sixty, making it the largest retrospective of Yeo's at that time.
"It felt a great privilege to go through the process, to be pictured in this way. I am used to being captured on screen, which can be fleeting, so it feels very special to have something permanent.
It is also fantastic for the portrait to be shown at the Lowry, in my home city, to which I feel very connected. Salford is so prominent in the cultural landscape of Britain, with its abundantly rich tradition of art, music, theatre, and so on, and many of our most important creative people originating here. I feel it is important that Salford continues to make a statement culturally, and it is wonderful if I can be part of that."
Maxine Peake, 2014
