HUGH MENDES

CHARLIE SMITH, SOLO CONTEMPORARY

One new feature of the British Art Fair 2022 will be the ‘Solo Contemporary’ stands, on the Second floor of the Saatchi Gallery, curated by Zavier Ellis, of CHARLIE SMITH, LONDON. This will feature stands from ten different galleries, each showing the work of one contemporary artist.

Hugh Mendes, 'Obituary Francis Bacon', 2021, Oil on linen, 30x20 cm

CHARLIE SMITH is among the exhibitors, and Ellis will be showing the work of London-based artist Hugh Mendes. Mendes is currently working on his ‘obituary’ series of self-portraits. He sources self-portraits of dead artists, paints them in oils on linen (faithful to the style of the original) and frames them within a painted mock-up of the border of the obituary page of The Guardian. Subjects have included Lucien Freud, Edgar Degas, Caravaggio, Rembrandt, Jan van Eyck, Marisol Escobar, and Walter Sickert.

The painting we’ve featured above breaks the mould slightly: instead of working from a self-portrait, Mendes used Lucien Freud’s portrait of Francis Bacon. ‘This particular painting,’ he reveals, ‘also functions as a memorial to the original painting, stolen in 1988 and as yet never recovered’. It’s a painting, then, of a no-longer-extant portrait of Francis Bacon, by Lucien Freud, by Hugh Mendes, and it started a series within the series (Emile Bernard by Toulouse Lautrec, by Hugh Mendes, etc). Caravaggio’s self-portrait as the head of Goliath, gives another nice twist to matters. 

CHARLIE SMITH LONDON