# animate! » Editorial » Tracing the Contours: Portraiture and Place in Contemporary Animation 1 at NPG London

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Originally published: 2006-02-04

Original publication timestamp: 4 February 2006 at 4:24 pm

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## [Tracing the Contours: Portraiture and Place in Contemporary Animation 1 at NPG London](https://animate.org.uk/editorial/2006/02/tracing-the-contours-portraiture-and-place-in-contemporary-animation-1-at-npg-london/)

**Thursday 9 March 2006 19:00**

Following 2004’s pioneering season *Animated: Moving Portraits of the Self and Other* at the National Portrait Gallery, London, animate! contributes a new three-part series to the Gallery’s 150th anniversary year, exploring portraiture and the dynamic medium of contemporary animation.

The primary focus of this season is the fascinating relationship between portraiture and place. Examining the implications of interior and exterior spaces, as well as the journeys made between them, *Tracing the Contours* draws from animate!’s impressive catalogue of commissions to illuminate this intriguing aspect of visual culture.

In addition, each evening the writer and *Time Out* film critic Gareth Evans investigates with cross-platform commentators the unique way in which animation, the manipulated moving image, can amplify notions of portraiture.

**Face to Place: Portraits in Public**

This first evening of the three part series explores how animation uses place, whether urban or rural, actual or imagined, to help create a dynamic and enhanced sense of individual or social portraiture.

Booker Prize-winning novelist [AS Byatt](http://www.asbyatt.com/), interested for many years in fine art and photography, extends her enquiry to contemporary experimental animation with a screening of the following films:

[Exposure](https://animate.org.uk/films/exposure/) by Peter Collis, [Ferment](https://animate.org.uk/films/ferment/) by Tim Macmillan, [Hypnomart](https://animate.org.uk/films/hypnomart/) by Joe Magee & Alistair Gentry, [Jumping Joan](https://animate.org.uk/films/jumpingjoan/) by Petra Freeman, [Soho Square](https://animate.org.uk/films/sohosquare/) by Mario Cavalli, [Stressed](https://animate.org.uk/films/stressed/) by Karen Kelly and [What She Wants](https://animate.org.uk/films/whatshewants/) by Ruth Lingford.

There will be two more film evenings at the NPG on 13 April and 11 May.

Ondaatje Wing Theatre
National Portrait Gallery
St Martin’s Place
Trafalgar Square
London WC2H 0HE
nearest tube: Leicester Square or Charing Cross
admission: £5 / £3 concessions

**Thursday 9 March 2006 19:00** [More details ›](http://www.npg.org.uk/live/lecindex.asp)[Map ›](http://www.npg.org.uk/live/opening.asp)

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