BP Portrait Award 2005
Until March 12; Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Art Not Oil
Until January 16; The Bongo Club, Edinburgh

The Portrait Award has been run by London’s National Portrait Gallery for 25 years now, and sponsored by BP for the last 15 years. The petrochemical giant, through its Arts and Culture strategy, claims “to contribute significantly to the economic and social well being of the UK”. But the green lobby has a name for this kind of diversionary PR. They call it greenwash.

A recent BP advert told UK viewers to “work out your carbon footprint – it’s a start”. In the USA, the graphics and music were unchanged, but the advert carried a radically different message: “We’re investing $15bn in finding new oil and gas in the Gulf of Mexico - it’s a start.” That’s greenwash.

Angered by BP’s touchy-feely sponsorship of the annual Portrait Award, the green action group Rising Tide now provides an antidote. Artists and non-artists across the UK are invited to submit their artworks to Art Not Oil, a touring exhibition which follows its big-budget rival around, highlighting the dirty issues that are nowhere to be seen in the hermetically sealed BP exhibition.

Although both are made up of works submitted by members of the public, the two shows are chalk and cheese. The Portrait Award is clinically precise, in form and content, bolstered by BP’s money and the art establishment’s authority. Art Not Oil is grungy and low-key, a mixed bag in terms of talent. But while the Portrait Award resembles a morgue full of well-executed corpses, Art Not Oil is alive and kicking.

The Portrait Award attracted over 1000 entries this year, all judged anonymously by a panel which includes the notoriously snooty art critic Brian Sewell and a man from BP. Around 50 short-listed paintings are on show at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, fitting beautifully into the temporary exhibition space.

The selection is alarming. Photography has surely not destroyed the art of portrait painting as much as this show suggests. Photorealism is everywhere, including the supernaturally detailed first prize portrait of artist Dean Marsh’s girlfriend. Every sequin in her scarf is laboriously reproduced, as are the individually rendered hairs in the beard of Andrew Tift’s Daniel. The artists have acted as machines, capturing every blood vessel and wrinkle as a camera would. Despite the rule which demands that the subject must sit for the painter, there is evidence everywhere of copying from photographs.

These are technically astounding paintings, but in many cases spiritually bereft. In the race to beat the machine, the artists have become machines. Others have managed to retain a sense of poetry despite their photorealism. Stefan Towler’s Arrival depicts a young man in a white hoodie. The oil on board has the polished glow of a 15th century Flemish painting, the sitter like a saintly monk anointed by a shaft of heavenly moonlight.

Many traditionalists complain that conceptual art has robbed the art world of style and personal expression. In this competition, whose core aim is a return to traditional figurative values, the lack of style is perverse. Here is a perfect chance to explore the possibilities of paint, and yet so many artists are stuck in a rut of robotic precision.

For some, the only way out is compositional drama. Megan Davies’s Gran Turismo is unremarkable in style, but striking in its dynamic arrangement. Two boys lean out of their sofa towards us, intent on their playstation, while their Asian granny sits back, a far away look in her eyes. While the boys are vigorously present, their feet dominating the foreground, the old woman’s sandals sit empty beside them, increasing her sense of detachment.

Shaun James Nielsen’s is one of the few pictures in the show to capture the essence of portrait painting. It’s not dependent on a clever idea or composition. It’s not a mechanically correct rendering of the sitter’s face. It’s a personality revealed in the very handling of the paint.

Neilsen’s self-portrait is poetry. The brushstrokes are loose and free, building up a head and shoulders which are arched, soft and slightly distorted, suggesting feigned superiority undermined by a vulnerable dishevelment. This character, coupled with light, painterly beauty, harmony, and a soft fleshy quality you could poke your finger into, makes Nielsen’s humble self-portrait my winner.

There’s no end of painterly freedom at the Bongo Club, in Art Not Oil. A diverse selection of works fills the walls around the DJ’s decks, like unholy icons around the high altar. Bush and Blair make regular appearances, riding rodeo on missiles, oozing slugs out of orifices, and participating, fingers on the buzzers, in a deathly TV show.

A quick look at the Art Not Oil website reveals that much of the best work is not on show at the Bongo Club, but there are one or two perfect demonstrations of what the Portrait Award should be about. James Self’s Saddam is a glowering portrait of the dictator, with a BP logo emblazoned on each lapel. The sky behind him is a plume of smoke, rising from a distant point on the horizon.

The acrylic painting doesn’t match the technical prowess of many in the Portrait Award, but it does convey much more than a photographic likeness. The looming intensity of the dictator is communicated in colour and shadow, and the two little logos speak volumes about corporate power in world politics.

A BP executive grins manically out of Smiles Means Sales, by F Richmond. The multi-coloured painting, again a far cry from the straitjacket of photorealism, introduces a bar chart with missiles and radar combined. The whole eye-catching composition brings together corporate spin, money and war in one simple equation.

In fact, climate change is relatively low profile in Art Not Oil. The stakes have been raised, and of more immediate concern to the artists are war and death. As you walk out of the door, you’re faced with a simple visual summary. Matthew Robins’s papier maché skull looks you in the eye, its newspaper surface swaddled in financial headlines. The skull is called True Portrait Of An Oil Company.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 08.01.06