Extraordinary Portraits 2026

Following the success last year of 'Extraordinary Portraits, with Bill Bailey', the 2026 series is on display in Bradford's Loading Bay gallery space until July. I went along with a friend for an early look. The BBC TV programmes each match artists with 'ordinary people who have done something extraordinary', to create a portrait. Having watched all six episodes on TV and been moved and uplifted by the stories, it was a delight to see the artworks for real. 

The standout painting for me was this one (below) by Jack Dickson. It depicts Seema, who ran a local Post Office and became caught up in the Post Office scandal, a gross miscarriage of justice where many people, over many years, were wrongly charged with false accounting (which turned out in the end to be a faulty computer programme). In Seema's case she was wrongly convicted and sent to prison whilst pregnant. The subtly layered painting has many symbolic references to her life, including a layer of postage stamps at the base. She is depicted standing tall, proud and beautiful, in a huge but quiet statement of strength and resilience. Wonderful. 

I also enjoyed the bold statement made by the portrait of Eddie aka 'Iron Gran', a lady who - at age 72 - was the oldest British woman to compete in an Ironman event and now runs a charity promoting fitness and companionship for older people. Painted by Caroline Pool, it shows strength and Eddie's fun-loving persona but also a moment of reflection. I loved her sparkly manicure!  

Two brothers, Jordan and Cain, painted by Unza Saleem, lost their mother at a young age due to a rare form of dementia and have since found out they both carry the same gene and are likely to develop the disease in their 40s. They are now channelling their energy into raising funds for dementia research. 

Two sisters, Grace and Amy, share an unusual bond. Grace was born without a womb. Amy donated her own womb to her sister, in a pioneering operation, enabling Grace to become pregnant and carry a miracle baby. The sensitive portrait by Karen Turner captures their special relationship of love and sacrifice. 

The artwork I expected to like the most turned out, for me, to be somewhat disappointing. The sculpture, by Nick Elphick, refers to the heroic act in 2019 when Darryn, a civil servant attending a prisoner rehabilitation conference in London, helped to apprehend a man who attacked and killed two people. Darryn grabbed a narwhal tusk off the wall and used it to fend off the terrorist, before grabbing his wrists to try and disarm him. Though his actions were heroic and he was awarded a gallantry medal, the aftermath was difficult and has had a life-changing effect on him. Nevertheless he dedicates his life to rehabilitating former offenders. 

It is in many ways a commanding sculpture, using the Japanese art of kintsugi - accentuating and healing broken pottery with gold - and including the narwhal tusk. The 'gold' appeared simply to be painted on rather than actually holding the cast together. The lump on his shoulder, which I think was intended to signify the burden he still carries, just looked to me a bit odd and the inclusion of the huge tusk, though symbolic, meant he appears to be standing in a box! Not only that but to me it doesn't even really look like Darryn, who is an extremely handsome young man. So, not a complete success in my eyes - but powerful nonetheless. 

The other one I didn't much like was a portrait by Ricky Wilson, of Lindsay who runs a rescue centre for exotic animals in Wales. It does actually carry a sense of her energy and the wild dedication that she brings to her work but I didn't like the random, coloured brushstrokes across her face. 

Alongside the exhibition you could watch a video of clips from the programmes or paint your own picture on acetate by tracing your face in a mirror. Many of those self-portraits were a lot of fun. 

 

'The Nature of Things'

There's a new exhibition in Salts Mill, just for the month of May. 'The Nature of Things' is work by members of the Yorkshire Sculptors Group. The explanatory blurb, too complicated to explain here, made it all sound quite interesting... and indeed it was. The artists are 'responding to this unrenovated part of Salts Mill' and to the materials they chose to use. Interesting... but none of it was, to me, particularly attractive or evoking of any real emotional response. If you're interested to delve further, the catalogue is available to read HERE. 

The pieces above are the work of Sarah Villeneau: 'Salvage' and 'Tenderness Chords'. 'Using the body as a starting point, these works use an assemblage approach to making as a way of exploring materiality and unexpected combinations. The use of found, discarded and repurposed materials with a make do and mend approach is somewhat transgressive and definitely playful.'

Below is Deborah Gardner's 'Invasive Species': 'influenced by the botanical gothic, plant horror and imaginings of future biospheres as a means of expressing anxieties as to our relationship with other species on earth, our climate crisis and a seeming lack of agency.'

Sally Barker's 'Dark Cloud' (above) was more immediately appealing to me, reminding me of a kind of Gothic chandelier: 'a shower of black, individually squeezed [ceramic] fingerprints, like a negative sunburst.'

I didn't know what to make of Christine Halsey's 'Domestic Landscape': 'stacks of clean white china and folded laundry sandwiched between ‘dirty’ or heavy building materials to create a precarious tower loaded with conflicting associations related to gender stereotypes' - but at least here I could discern some meaning. Similarly with her installation called 'Cold Dark Heavy Light', part of which is pictured below. This 're-imagines the West Yorkshire landscape as a vertical cross-section taken through its canals, rivers and moorlands, constructed from the earth, water, pollution and debris found there.' The hanging bottles contained liquid and some on the windowsill held earth. 

Finally 'two painted works are details taken from a map that was created in Saigon, Vietnam where I walked a relatively new neighbourhood of the city, known as District 7, collecting data. The squares containing the black and white cross hatching pattern represent building blocks, while the squares featuring colour represent road intersections.'  This is by Patrick S Ford, using a mobile phone app - and was quite pleasant but seemed a very complicated way to create what is essentially a few patterns. 

Maybe I'm a philistine! I did, however, enjoy the experience of looking round and trying to puzzle them out. It seems, particularly with sculpture these days, that it is more about the artist's relationship with the materials, their ideas and their emotional journey than the finished product per se. I think that's a bit different from painting or photography, but I know from my visits to the world class exhibitions at The Hepworth that some modern sculpture does have the power to move and excite me. 

Perhaps I'll revisit this, when it might be quieter, and see if my opinion shifts. 

Arts Trail Day 1

Saltaire Arts Trail traditionally spans the early May Bank Holiday weekend, seeing many of the houses in the village transformed into mini art galleries on the 'Open Village' circuit, with various exhibitions in the larger venues.  

One of the bigger houses on Albert Road belongs to David Starley, a well-known artist who also runs the Bingley Gallery. He was exhibiting his own paintings, plus various displays from other artists. There were some lovely turned wood pieces from Mike Bentley and ceramics by Kath Bonson. I also enjoyed the display of older paintings of the local area, which David collects and sells through his gallery. They included these watercolour miniatures (below) by John Butterfield (1913-1997).

The Wash House Gardens held colourful digital art by Ellie Hawkes, some printed on translucent perspex discs.  

In the grounds of the United Reformed Church, Luke Thompson was demonstrating some live painting in oils. 

Jim Moir - Neo Fauna

The new exhibition in Cartwright Hall is 'Neo Fauna' by Jim Moir, a prolific artist more widely known as comedy legend Vic Reeves (part of the Reeves and Mortimer double act with Bob Mortimer.) 

I enjoyed the exhibition very much.  It's hugely varied, with some wildly colourful images, many of them birds, like the long -tailed tits below:

and the well-observed Black Guillemot Frenzy: 

Then there are much more understated but again beautifully observed watercolours. I particularly liked the quartet of curlews: 

'Barn Owl in a woodland' was looser and more impressionistic, and full of atmosphere. I also enjoyed the magpie (below). There are many of them in the trees round where I live and he has captured their 'essence' really well here, I think. Apparently, since he retired from comedy and became a full-time artist, he paints in the morning and then goes for a walk in the afternoon, closely observing the birds and the details of their appearance and behaviour. That careful attention really shows in his work.

Studies of dancers and birds imaginatively echo their movements.

Then there were more surreal and highly coloured offerings, like 'The Exhibitionist' (below) and some rather odd, distorted studies of 'American Couples', which I didn't warm to at all. 

It's rare that you see an artist with such a broad range of styles. I wouldn't normally show so many but felt I needed to do them justice. The exhibition is on until the end of August. 

Axel Salto

Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto: Playing with Fire - at The Hepworth, Wakefield

And so to Axel Salto's work, as curated by Edmund de Waal. Salto (1889-1961) was Danish: 'a radical, polymathic figure who crossed boundaries from one discipline to another, producing an extraordinary body of ceramic work alongside paintings, wood-cuts, drawings, book illustration and textiles.' Most of his work was inspired by organic forms: buds, seeds, sprouts and occasionally creatures. 

You weren't allowed to touch the exhibits, of course, though the surfaces almost begged you to reach out and caress their knobbly forms. 

Apart from the three pronged 'tooth' things (above top left) that just served to remind me of the tooth extraction I've recently endured (!), I enjoyed all the shapes and colours. 

There was more than a hint of what we might now call 'Scandi modern' in his fabrics and designs: complex, lyrical and yet at the same time still spare and clean. (The above photo shows three lengths of fabric and a clay relief panel.) 

I really enjoyed seeing them all. The exhibition is on until 4 May 2026, so local peeps still have chance to visit it. 

Edmund de Waal #2

Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto: Playing with Fire - at The Hepworth, Wakefield

In contrast to the ethereal, light coloured ceramic vessels and sheets I showed yesterday, Edmund de Waal was displaying 'the largest vessels I have ever made. Into their damp surface I inscribed fragments of Rilke's poetry, marking and erasing and rewriting the words, a kind of elegie. They are made with a rough, red clay that turns as black as volcanic stone: that is the alchemy of the kiln'.  

These were monumental, solid, textural... magnificent pieces. I loved them. There was a timelessness about them, a kind of Biblical significance. 

There were a couple of niches too, that contained much smaller pieces but in a similar dark tone. I loved the light on light/dark on dark displays in the exhibition. Magical. 

 

Edmund de Waal

Edmund de Waal and Axel Salto: Playing with Fire - at The Hepworth, Wakefield

This was the exhibition I really wanted to see. I've only recently been alerted to Edmund de Waal, as I've been reading a delightful memoir by Nigel Slater: 'A Thousand Feasts', in which he talks about his own collection of Edmund de Waal ceramics. 

Edmund de Waal (b 1964, Nottingham) is a British contemporary artist, potter and writer known for his large scale installations of porcelain vessels. This exhibition at the Hepworth is his homage to and collaboration with the acclaimed Danish ceramicist, Axel Salto (1889–1961). It's (apparently) the first major exhibition of Salto's work and displays pieces by both artists that kind of dance around each other in a very beguiling fashion. 

These photos show some of Edmund de Waal's small ceramic vessels, beautifully delicate and imperfect pieces in the thinnest and finest material, lifted by subtle glazes, barely discernible embossed writing and some metallic, gilded embellishments. 

The more I looked, the more beautiful I found them. Their delicacy is belied by the fact that fired porcelain is actually quite a strong material. 

I was reminded of a couple of pots that I have at home that are precious to me. Oddly enough, my daughter and granddaughter made these once when we visited The Hepworth and had a play in their craft room. These are unglazed clay but there is an echo between the works, I think. 

Kira Freije: Unspeak the Chorus

Kira Freije: Unspeak the Chorus - at The Hepworth, Wakefield. 

This is the first major solo exhibition for Kira Freije (b 1985 London): twenty life size figures in small groupings 'suggesting narrative fragments or a frame of mind. Freije casts her own hands and feet in aluminium, building her metal sculptures from the feet upwards, welding together stainless steel strips like a pencil outline to create their forms. To these, she adds faces, or parts of faces, cast from people who are important in her life, as well as fabric and found materials such as brass and copper to complete the materially-rich whole'.

At first look, I wasn't sure I liked them but then I gradually warmed to them, finding them very expressive and evocative, full of emotion and exquisitely crafted.  

For the first few minutes, I was in the room with only a couple of other people, quietly drinking it all in. Then a large group of young students arrived, bringing a very different vibe! It became quite hard to move around and find clear angles to take photos. I'm all for introducing young people to good art, but to be honest I could have done without them right at that moment! It was well worth seeing though.