You, Me and Everybody Else

I find portraits funny things, really. They can present perspectives of people that telescope into private emotion, personal drama or specific context - but they can also reflect back the universal; a macrocosm of emotions, social comment, human tragedy or wonder. It's hard to say what makes me connect with one, and why others leave me cold. i always think buying portraits of people I don't know is a weird one, and yet i do it all the time - you sort of have to have a very intimate relationship with someone to invest in a picture of them, and yet you don't know them. but i guess that's the thing about a portrait; it can leave a searing impression - visually and emotionally - the connection is there, even without knowing the subject.

You, Me and Everybody Else is a group show with work by six women - Linda Brownlee, Annie Collinge, Tara Darby, Anna Leader, Jo Metson Scott and Charlotte Player. Walking between the six collections of portraits, your impressions and emotions zoom in and out, refocusing on groups of images which have a very different emotional and visual resonance... tender, bizarre, bewildered, moving, unsettling, curious... my favourite were the portraits of an East End family - met over the garden fence - a strangely intimate series of images that managed to convey the vim and vigour of the characters in the family, yet without being showy or brash, the closeness and personalities conveyed through a natural and subtle composition. Annie Collinge's images of a New York eccentric (below), were both sad and wonderful - strange and empowering, utterly unsettling in a brilliant, provocative way. Anna Leader's series of self-portraits showing the pregnant artist donning quasi ironic warrior garb (above) left an indelible impression - beautifully exploring the fear, the wonder, the strangeness, the power, the weakness, the humour, the ridiculousness, the confusion and the clarity of being pregnant.

‘You Me and Everybody Else’ runs from the 7th – 26th of May at The Print Space Gallery on Kingsland Road. www.theprintspace.co.uk