Saving Faces: portraits by Mark Gilbert

National Portrait Gallery, London, 27 February until 21 April 2002, open daily 10 am to 6 pm and until 9 pm on Thursday and Friday, admission free
Leeds City Art Gallery, July­August 2002
Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, September­October 2002
www.npg.org.uk

One million people in the United Kingdom incur facial injuries each year. Some people have cancer affecting the mouth; many are born with facial disfigurement. Some require corrective surgery.

The surgeon, the artist, and the portrait

Some of the images in Saving Faces are unsettling: they offer an insight into, and force reflection upon, the emotional and physical difficulties associated with facial disfigurement. The viewer is compelled to consider the impact that facial deformity has on an otherwise, or previously, normal life. The fascination and even repulsion shows us, particularly as medics, how we react to deformities, whatever their cause, and to acknowledge the extent to which we use appearances to judge people.

The exhibition is a collaboration between oral and maxillofacial surgeon Iain Hutchison, consultant at St Bartholomews and the Royal London Hospital, and Glasgow artist Mark Gilbert. During a residency, Gilbert painted patients undergoing facial surgery for cancer or for deformity and patients with severe facial injuries. The brochure containing the case studies relating to the portraits is vital, if downplayed, in order to put many of the images into context.

Gilberts powerful portraits allow us to experience something of what the patients themselves may feel. They capture more than just the form of the patients faces—the intensity of the face damaged by trauma, or unveiled during the surgical process, and the changing emotions and character of the patients. Many of the “post-op” images demonstrate the importance of surgery and the positive impact it can have.

The subject of one picture was savagely assaulted with baseball bats. He now displays a photograph of his portrait on his sitting room wall—chin bandaged, skull caved in, and an anaesthetic tube in his mouth—which reminds him he can overcome any adversity.

Ultimately, whatever you feel you gain from the exhibition, it demands that everyone search their feelings towards people with facial, or indeed any, disfigurement. This can only be for the best in our chosen profession.

Useful information

Expert led focus groups are planned to discuss responses to the portraits in the exhibition. They hope to discover what it means to look at “difficult” pictures that portray serious illness and pain.

The Facial Surgery Research Foundation was launched in June 2000 (as Saving Faces) by Chris Smith, then secretary of state for culture, media, and sport. The charity aims to secure funds for research into all aspects of the disorders affecting the mouth and face.