An upcoming exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery, Bare: Degrees of undress, celebrates the role of the nude and the partial nude in Australian portraiture.
Featuring over 90 portraits from the Gallery's collection, the exhibition includes paintings and photographs, mostly of Australian celebrities in various states of undress.
Curator of the exhibition, Penelope Grist, was fascinated to discover that almost all the Gallery's nude and semi-nude portrait sitters were Australia’s foremost creatives and sportspeople; the majority being men with their shirts off.
"Bareness is not as extreme as nakedness and not as refined as nudity. Bareness emphasises something about a subject's identity as well as reflecting society. The decision to uncover part, or all, of the body in a portrait is at least as significant as a choice of clothing. Visitors to Bare will see these portraits in a completely new way."
Some of the personalities included in the exhibition are Megan Gale, Ian Thorpe, Michael Hutchence, Billy Slater, Germaine Greer and Dame Edna Everage.
"Bare will be fun, whilst also interrogating our instinctive reactions to bareness," says Grist.
As part of the exhibition the National Portrait Gallery has also created The Bare Game which visitors can play online and in the gallery to discover their very own nude alter-ego from art history. Its release will coincide with the exhibition.
Bare: Degrees of undress is at the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra from 14 August until 15 November 2015. Entry is free.
Ian Thorpe 2002, by James Houston.
Michael Hutchence 1997, by Polly Borland.
Dame Edna Everage 1982, by Lewis Morley.
Billy Slater 2005, by Julian Kingma.
Professor Germaine Greer 1999, by Polly Borland.