Latest Films
6:10
A Female Gaze
HENI Talks in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, explores the complexities behind female self-portraiture, showing stunning examples by artist Issy Wood. Three striking works by the London based artist Issy Wood, unpacks the bold new ways of creating self portraits. Working with found images and combining different styles and techniques, her work offers new ways of understanding the self and perceptions of women in the 21st Century.
04:31
Lord Byron's Decoupage Screen
HENI Talks in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, reflect on the invention of the cult of personality in the Romantic age through Byron’s Decoupage Screen. As a piece of furniture with a practical function, like a giant scrapbook, this six-foot high, four-panelled folding screen is elaborately decorated on each side with a cut and pasted mosaic of text and images. One side of the screen depicts a history of the English theatre in over one hundred and fifty mezzotints and line engravings of notable actors. The other side presents the world of boxing.
04:09
Daguerreotype-mania
HENI Talks in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, examines and demonstrates the introduction of the daguerreotype from 1839 that marked a revolution in portrait making. Daguerreotype portraiture caught the public’s imagination, and the photographic studios where they were lucrative businesses and quickly sprang up around the world. This film explores work made by the two earliest photographic portrait studios in London, set up by Richard Beard and Antoine Claudet. They opened within months of each other in 1841, and are considered the birth of portrait photography in the United Kingdom.
09:19
The Portrait of Mai
HENI Talks in collaboration with the National Portrait Gallery, explores the importance of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ spectacular Portrait of Mai (Omai). Dr Lucy Pelzt, explains in detail, Sir Joshua Reynolds’ majestic painting which holds a pivotal place in global art history, depicting the first Polynesian to visit Britain, and is widely regarded as the finest portrait by one of Britain’s greatest artists.
