AN exhibition challenging how we see ourselves is coming to the National Portrait Gallery this weekend.

“Who Are You: Australian Portraiture” is a comprehensive study of portraiture in Australia and comes to Canberra after a season in Melbourne. It is also the first exhibition combining the resources and holdings of the NPG and the National Gallery of Victoria.

Co-curated by the NPG’s Joanna Gilmour and the NGV’s Beckett Rozentals, it  features 130 works by Australian artists, not least Patricia Piccinini, Atong Atem, Howard Arkley, Vincent Namatjira, Brook Andrew and Tracey Moffatt.

Portrait subjects include the late Albert Namatjira, David Gulpilil and Queen Elizabeth II, photographed by Polly Borland during an five-minute sitting on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee.

The show, presented across five thematic sections, questions who we are and how we view others – historically, today and into the future, while also examining unconventional ways of representing likeness.

Gilmour says the show reaches a powerful conclusion as it attempts to dismantling the idea of the Australian “icon”, helping us to reconfigure our definitions of national identity.

“Who Are You: Australian Portraiture,” at the National Portrait Gallery, until January 29. Free, bookings not required.

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