We’ve just received this link to a compilation of the videos from the “Face to Face” installation presented by acclaimed photographer Tom Oxley at Londonewcastle Project Space back in October 2012.

If you missed the show, it’s a great snap shot which we hope will lead you to further investigation - if you visit Tom’s stunning website (click her for link) there is a whole host of longer videos to discover.

This is a concept that’s going to run and run and we here that Oxley is working on new material to present to the public later in the year. Don’t miss next time.

All visual content ©Thomas Oxley Photography.

www.tomoxley.com

After the rush and success of the private view last week and a steady stream of visitors over the weekend, I had the opportunity to revisit the exhibition during a relatively quiet time to really get Face to Face with the show. Since meeting talented photographer and bloody nice bloke Tom Oxley and seeing his work I’ve been looking forward to seeing the idea realised.

As you venture through the darkened galleries, you are presented with over a dozen larger than life projections of contemporary music artists presented in a video-portrait style (there are actually 28 different acts on rotation). Look one way and you see Mark Ronson tapping out a beat, another and you see Kimberley Wyatt or Miles Kane or Professor Green….

What is not so evident - until you twig while standing in front of the projections with Bang & Olufsen speakers either side and music coming out - is that each artist is listening to a music track while being filmed - and as viewers, we are being allowed to watch their reactions to the music and witness the effects of the unrelenting gaze of the camera. The effect - aided by the simply yet stunning use of white frames around each subject which act like windows into another world - is that one is drawn in to the subject’s emotional reaction to the tunes, their movements and comfort/ anxiety in front of the camera. As a result, we feel we are closer to them and might know them better for the experience.

The portrait of Liam Gallagher is beguiling: while it reinforces what we, as consumers of the mass media’s interpretation of the man, think we know about him - full of confidence and sneering bravado; it also reveals another less sure side that we may have suspected all along (seen via the rising heart beat and glances off camera). What’s unquestionable though is his magnetism. And indeed the magnetism of the whole show.

Face to Face: The Moving Portrait runs to the 28th October with opening hours that have just been extended to 8pm midweek to cope with demand. Click here for more details.