Venue inside the Old Street tube station
A new pop-up gallery in Shoreditch is using the selfie phenomenon to draw attention to classic and contemporary self-portrait art.
The exhibition entitled “Art of the Selfie” not only displays contemporary self-portraits such as Andy Warhol’s pop art photos but also invites viewers to use a self-portrait machine made by Australian street artist Jimmy C.
Amy Holland, an intern for King and Mcgraw, the art retailer owner of the pop-up, says that the idea behind showcasing selfie art is to attract a younger audience.
“We’ve done a lot of auctions of 18th century lithographs so we wanted to sell more contemporary art,” said Holland.
The pop-up also offers art talks with artists who collaborated with the event as well as workshops on Instagram technique and charcoal portrait drawing. Lamiah Davey, a customer sales adviser, says the pop-up has generated a good amount of traffic into the store: “There’s people who’ve come in who want to publish their work on our website and people who come in to buy little trinkets.”
The pop-up will become a monthly event if sales increases are significant enough to continue.
The gallery is located in the tunnels of Old Street tube station and runs from 4 to 14 November.
“Selfie” was added to the dictionary, and named the International Word of the Year by Oxford Dictionaries in 2013.
Photo: Cristina Matamoros
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