A proposal for ‘Cut, Copy, Remix’ at Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, 2020. Using portraits from the Birmingham Museum Trust’s Digital Image Resource, I thought about the connection between a painted portriat and its digital twin. Material is translated from oil paint to pixel. Each new portrait uses and re-uses only what is contained in the original painting. The re-constructions have an echo in the occupations and preoccupations of the sitters. William Phipson, inventor of a steel roller, is stretched and flattened, a miniature of G.F Watts, a painter and sculptor becomes a digital sculpture, Sir John Franklin, arctic explorer is pictured through digital shards, and the portrait of surgeon, John Derrington is a dissection of his original portrait.
