A Narrated Portrait

This output, an interactive website, is the product of a long-term engagement with the relationship between portraiture and biography. The website was developed as part of a collaborative AHRC-funded research network, Transforming Artists Books, (TAB) between Tate, CCW, BL and V & A and can be viewed on Tate’s Research web page http://www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/transforming-artist-books/digital-books Hogan worked with the BL’s National Life Stories (NLS) to explore how the experience of creating sequential portraits might be affected by the simultaneous recording of an audio life story with the sitter. Anya Sainsbury was the subject for A Narrated Portrait (the fourth that Hogan has constructed in collaboration with NLS). Constructing the portrait was as much about listening as observing, hearing the sitter speak about her life, listening to nuances of voice and documenting physical changes and varied moods during 18 sessions of 4 hours each. A Narrated Portrait was first presented at the TAB research workshop at the V & A and subsequently developed in conjunction with Armadillo Systems using Turning the Pages 2.0 software. The original aim was to show how existing material, including extracts from the NLS recording conducted by Cathy Courtney and a film made of one of the sittings by Ed Webb-Ingall,could be accessed in new ways using digital technology. It addressed questions related to authorship and copyright, but rather than being a new version of existing work, A Narrated Portrait became a new work in its own right. Hogan was subsequently invited to create a similar, interactive, screen-based piece, based on her sketchbooks, paintings, NLS recordings with Ian Hamilton Finlay, photographs and film for the exhibition Of Green Leaf, Bird and Flower at the Yale Center for British Art