"The exhibition Tough and Tender includes artistic imagery that may provoke emotional responses. It contains some artistic photographic adult nudes and an artistic video documenting historical performance art where the artist places himself in dangerous situations. This material is presented sensitively and in the context of artistic explorations of self-hood and self-identity."
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If you want an idea of what the intriguing new photographic exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery is about, this explanatory note at the entrance does a good job of summing it up.
The series of images in Tough and Tender – by a range of acclaimed American and Australian photographers – are so eclectic, and yet so united, that just understanding their context is almost enough to set you on your journey through the exhibition space. A gentle warning about possible emotional responses (negative or otherwise), a forward notice about light nudity, a description of the show's manifesto, and we're off. Ready?
The list of names, to anyone in the know, already evokes notions of coming-of-age and the vulnerabilities of youth – Larry Clark and Robert Mapplethorpe, Nan Goldin, Chris Burden and Collier Schorr. Already, we know we may feel jolted from the comfortable confines of life beyond adolescence and young adulthood (for those who have passed those years). Throw in the contemporary Australian artists Rozalind Drummond and Warwick Baker, and their moving and tender portraits of youth, and you might experience a shock of recognition, even nostalgia.
The faces, generally unsmiling, are all young, but not all are soft. Some gaze, provocative, uncompromising. Others gaze simply but steadfastly. Still others don't look at us at all, but are captured mid-kiss, or turning to a mirror, or at the ceiling. At least one is walking away.
The exhibition's curator, Christopher Chapman, for one, would prefer the images to speak for themselves as much as possible, and has crafted the sparest, most elegant captions possible for each body of work in the show. And the images – raw and intimate, gentle and sometimes confronting – speak volumes, which is why they've been selected.
"It's very much about a particular emotional feeling, and it's a group of artists whose work share that feeling," he says.
"In terms of the Portrait Gallery's program, it's about our extended mission to enhance the understanding of portraiture, but I also think how portraiture can really relate to thinking about selfhood and self-identity, and also how different artists are working with portraiture too."
The exhibition – both in terms of artists and subject – is close to Chapman's heart, not least because his own PhD thesis focused on adolescent masculinity. Larry Clark, who has 22 works in this show (all from the National Gallery of Australia's collection), featured heavily in his writing, and many of the other images chime with themes that have long preoccupied him.
"I think what appeals to me about them is very much that sense of softness and tenderness that evokes the tentative, searching qualities of what it is to be ourselves, and so in some cases that translates into an exploration of coming of age, of youth," he says.
"I would also say that while it doesn't represent a movement or a survey, it does represent an attitude or a feeling that exists. It's probably possible to curate a similar sort of exhibition anywhere in the world, because I think the themes are universal themes."
How do I become myself – an individual? It's a question – or sense of searching – that runs like a thread throughout the show, and makes the diverse images all the more potent as a collective.
"The stories that their work tells makes a very powerful group," says Chapman.
"And beyond that, as a curator, I've selected certain works, certain images that will work together and that have an emotional effect."
"I suppose it's a little bit like a poem or a piece of music or something like that, that brings together certain elements to set a feeling in play."
He says he hopes viewers will feel a sense of connection to, and compassion towards, the images' subjects and creators.
"The title of the show, Tough and Tender, is a little bit of a clue that it's very hard to work out who it is that you want to be and how to do that," he says.
"Everyone wants to be loved, and that's often a very raw experience or sentiment. We were all young once."
Tough and Tender opens at the National Portrait Gallery on July 15, and run until October 16.
