National Portrait Gallery commissions Kate and Rali Beynon, and Michael Pablo to create Enlightens Illumination projection for 2023, coincides with Portrait23: Identity

The Naarm/Melbourne-based artist, along with her son Rali Beynon and husband Michael Pablo are the brains behind this year's Enlighten Illuminations on the National Portrait Gallery.

Exploring ideas of storytelling, kindred spirits, fluid and hybrid identities through guardian spirits and talismanic imagery, the work, titled Spirits Shapeshifting, evokes an otherworldly space to counteract earthly anxieties and troubled times.

And speaking of the theme of identity, to link it with the gallery's upcoming contemporary art exhibition Portrait23: Identity, the family have combined forces - Kate Beynon's art practice, Rali Beynon's animation skills and Pablo's background in sound - for a supernaturally inspired animation version of themselves and other family members, including their pets. They have also created a second work that will be unveiled when Portrait23 opens in coming weeks.

"We're weaving the family portraits in an unusual way throughout our work," Beynon says. "I guess we've really tapped into the idea of exploring hybrid identity, and then it connects with my project for inside the gallery as well.

"And supernatural elements are quite connected to themes throughout my work - I'm really interested in storytelling and often weaving family figures and also guardian spirit figures throughout. It's a way to explore ideas of identity and mixed cultural background - we have quite a diverse family background - I wanted to include images of supernatural portraits of family members.

"It was thinking about sci-fi, futuristic imagery as having potential for other worlds and hope in the future. We're dealing with today's anxieties and things like that."

The projections, and corresponding work in Portrait23, are almost like watercolours come to life.

These supernaturally inspired impressions of themselves - along with their spirit guardians and botanical imagery such as thriving lotus blooms and eerie forest scenes - give the works this dreamlike feeling, which is set to only increase when digitally painted on the National Portrait Gallery's facade.

"It's quite an experimental process painting the watercolours and then scanning and digitally animating," Beynon says.

"And then that also tended to create quite another worldly effect, or space. So that's been interesting exploring that more, and more challenging as well, but in a good way.

"It's an expansive, more panoramic, horizontal site that we've been working with. And we've been lucky to have the National Portrait Gallery team and also the [digital producers] Electric Canvas support and help advise us with how to approach that. Because it is a really beautiful, quite clean surface - like a poster, rather than a rough brick wall - but it does have certain architectural features."

The Enlighten Illuminations will light up the national institutions in the Parliamentary Triangle with the usual stunning displays of light, sound and movement from Friday to March 13. And while every institution gives its own brief to creators, it's not unusual for the National Portrait Gallery to reflect what's happening on its inside walls on its external ones.

Portrait23: Identity is a major contemporary art exhibition that aims to reflect on and redefine portraiture in 21st-century Australia, and is set to open to the public on March 10.

Spirits Shapeshifting is therefore a taste of what the exhibition will have on the show, and also an opportunity to see both of Beynon's works within hours of each other. And the best time to do this will be on March 10, when the National Portrait Gallery is open late, allowing Canberrans to see both Enlighten and Portrait23 at the same time.

MUST READS:

And to take Beynon's work to the next level, the exhibition includes an interactive face-making space for anyone wanting to create their own version of the artist's facial imagery.

"It's aiming to push, pull and expand ideas of portraiture," she says.

"Earlier on I had a range of concept designs and along with the National Portrait Gallery curatorial team, we gravitated towards the most interactive ideas; which developed into the Fantastic Faces Space.

"I built on previous interactive projects using soft sculptural elements, and designed a new range of movable soft forms to create weird and wonderful faces which can be attached onto the gallery walls, and there are surreal botanical cushions to lounge on in the space.

"And within that is an immersive space. We're going to have floor cushions that are shaped like the elements as well. And that's the part that people can rearrange, they can create faces that might look a bit curious, supernatural or they can create patterns. So the shape-shifting idea crosses over between both of the projects."

As a whole, Portrait23: Identity is all about preconceived ideas about portraiture and representation.

The expansive exhibition and program feature new work from multi-award-winning contemporary Australian artists and collectives working across every state and territory.

Responding to the broad concept of identity, each artist has been invited to realise a new approach to portraiture across a range of mediums, not only painting, drawing and photography, but street art, suspended textiles, performance, ceramics, bronze, and soft sculpture.

"Each of the artists selected is well-known and influential in their own right, but many would not consider themselves to be portraitists," collection and exhibitions director Sandra Bruce says.

"The National Portrait Gallery is excited to work with them on this innovative, provocative exhibition, that moves beyond expected notions of what portraiture conventionally is.

"A portrait is generally understood to be a literal visual likeness of a person, perhaps going so far as to reference their interests and endeavours.

"With Portrait23, through directly engaging with some of Australia's most exciting contemporary artists, we are bringing new, diverse concepts and perspectives around the genre, and its inherent universal theme of identity, to the table."

Enlighten Illuminations is on from March 3 to 13 in the Parliamentary Triangle.

Portrait23: Identity is at the National Portrait Gallery from March 10 to June 18.

We've made it a whole lot easier for you to have your say. Our new comment platform requires only one log-in to access articles and to join the discussion on The Canberra Times website. Find out how to register so you can enjoy civil, friendly and engaging discussions. See our moderation policy here.