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Official Coronation State Portrait News
For over a full year I’ve been working in a temporary studio at Clarence House, the Royal Residence in London, granted to me by the King and Queen for the singular purpose of completing the Official State Coronation Portrait of Queen Camilla.
For a year I have not been able to reveal anything about this painting but now I’m very happy to announce the unveiling on 06/05/2025 at the National Gallery in London in the presence of the King and Queen and a large group of press, curators and museum staff.
It was wildly unexpected and a huge honour to have received a request from Queen Camilla well before her Coronation to take on this commission. Uniquely, I have had plenty of time and multiple sittings with the Queen to make sure I have done all I can do. Now I must let the wind take it.
It will hang at the National Gallery in the Central Hall for one month and subsequently in July it will be hung permanently at Buckingham Palace in the one room open to the public every year for 3 months from July-October.
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What I have been up to lately
A cause for celebration with you. On a high point of my career stretching back 45 years as an artist and musician, this year has seen both the Royal State Portrait commission and the release of my first solo album. There have been so many wonderful sitters, from our german stone mason in Suffolk to heads of State, Royalty and everyone in between.
It has truly been a privilege to get know, study and experience the special bond between sitter and artist over nearly half a century. The whole process of painting someone is a creative collaboration and more than a mere exercise in facsimile. The result is a document of a relationship and the extended time spent in one another’s company.
By this year’s end I will have completed the Coronation State Portrait of Queen Camilla. To be hung in Buckingham Palace in the Throne Room early next year. I can’t release any images of the works and preliminary sketches at present as I’m held to some pretty rigorous NDA’s for the period leading up to the official unveiling. (Except for the photo of me peering at the Coronation Crown).
It was an unprecedented pleasure to spend so much time with HM Queen Camilla during our sittings. I was also able to sketch and scrutinise the Coronation Crown, this extraordinary object was released from the Tower of London for only one day (with a security detail in attendance!) to my temporary studio at their majesty’s London residence, Clarence House.
If I never do another thing in my life, I will at least know that this work, as the only official Coronation State Portrait of Queen Camilla that will ever exist, will be part of our nation’s history. I am honoured and humbled by the King and Queen’s belief in my ability to do justice to this once in a lifetime commission.
–– All images copyright to Benney Studios and not for republication —
Other news…
I’ve participated in a number of group shows lately including a large scale drawing ‘Casino’ and looped video work of one of the ‘Reliquary Series’(below) in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition.
| ‘The Listener’ at the Mall Galleries Royal Society of Portrait Painters exhibition. |
‘Heavy Water’ at the Britten Pears Arts Summer Exhibition and another ‘Reliquary Series’ video at the Anima Mundi Gallery ‘A Skin Made Porous’ exhibition.
As well as installing the ‘Speaking in Tongues’ on silver leaf work at KOKO in Camden I also held a live performance with my band SALLIS, of a few tracks off my first album release ‘Tree of Ghosts’ on the Ellen Terry Stage at the House of KOKO. (Doing well on Spotify. If you want a listen use this link. https://open.spotify.com/artist/3byJhOpLm0CaUAWwFsvTRm?si=ch1qzU7aRyabHARNQiRkNQ)
My album ‘Tree of Ghosts’ alongside Nikolaj Torp Larsen’s new album cover. He has used a painting of mine currently in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
There have been a number of other commissioned works that have been a great pleasure including this ‘Burning Moor’ painting for a collector on the Yorkshire Moors.
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What’s been occurring lately
2022 – 2023
I know we are all strapped for time, especially now but I thought I should send my news at least once a year. Hope you can wade through it all!
Click on any of the images above for a link to the Portrait archive pages of my website
Here are some of my portrait projects of 2022…some are of close friends and some, like the hairy girl Antoinetta Gonzales, are special commissions…all are beautiful stories, which is why I love to paint people. Those conversations in the studio, one on one, are some of the most intimate of exchanges and inform every brush stoke. A portrait is not just a likeness it is also a mirror. As with life we are drawn to the dream of unity with the mirror of our souls. If we lean into the meniscus that separates us from ourselves we may, from time to time, glimpse the divine.
December 2023…King Charles and Queen Camilla have personally asked me to paint the official Coronation State Portrait of Queen Camilla for the Royal Collection.
I am surprised but excited at the prospect of recording this singular moment in history.
I will be starting this enormous painting in December and aim to have it finished by April, 2024. The painting will be hung in the State Rooms of Buckingham Palace.
October, 2023… I have donated a painting to the auction at Sotherby’s for the charity ‘Freedom from Torture’, supporting people who have survived torture and offering sanctuary for hundreds of refugees and asylum seekers, rebuilding their lives in the UK.
Artists include Anthony Gormley, Grayson Perry, Ai Wei Wei, Mona Hatoum, Kiki Smith and me.
October, 2023… Installing my composite, 3/4 size silver leaf giclee print ‘Speaking in Tongues’ at the truly amazing, newly restored venue and club Koko’s in Camden.
This place has got to be the most well-appointed ‘musos’ hang out anywhere.
Special thanks to Nick Quinby and Mikei Hall for the experienced install and Katie Heller for curating this space…and Olly Bengough for believing in the vision and Violletta for her support.
The friends that modelled for this painting are from left to right – Richard Strange, James Ribbans, Nicolas Quinby, Levi Ducran, Viktor Wynd, Jon Spiteri, Nitin Sawhney, Johnny Dewe Matthews, Uri Fruchtmann, Adam Fuss and Nick Laird Clowes
June, 2023…
‘Tree of Ghosts’ final mastering at the legendary Metropolis studios.
Album launch in the new year, 2024 at Koko’s in Camden…date to be announced.
Royal Academy Summer Show, 2023…Varnishing Day at the RA summer exhibition…astonished to find my painting Grenfell Tower ‘ The Sleep of Reason’ hanging in an exceptional room amongst exceptional works by RA’s. Thanks to Royal academicians Tim Shaw and David Remfry for believing in the work and the message.
Proceeds will go to the Grenfell Foundation.
Grenfell Tower – ‘The Sleep of Reason’ – 2017, oil and carbonised cladding on canvas
I lived and worked in the vicinity of Grenfell Tower and was deeply affected by the catastrophic fire that destroyed so many people’s lives. I felt compelled to do something that could possibly remain as a memorial to the victims. I started work on this a few days after the tragedy. The point of view being from the garden of a friend, a neighbouring property directly under Grenfell Tower.
During the night of the fire, the burning and carbonised cladding had fallen from the tower into the garden. I collected this material and back in the studio ground it into an oil medium to make the paint used to create this work. Hence, this painting is not only of Grenfell Tower but made of it as well. It is both a representation and a manifestation.
It was conceived as a monument and a lament; The catastrophic dysfunction around Grenfell Tower fire disaster remains to this day, a grim testament to the lack of connection between institutions that bear responsibility for the disaster and residents that suffer the consequences…and this work memorialises the mostly unrecognised and overlooked immigrant communities that live among us.
February, 2023…
Alexander the Great through the dreams of the Greek philosopher Aristotle. A staged reading of an epic poem by Stamatis Filippoulis at the British Library with my art direction and projections, directed by Elizabeth Filippouli.
January, 2023…Some stills from the installation of my film ‘Requiem’ at Dorfold Hall, Cheshire.
Digitally augmented painting with a specially composed work by the maestro that is Nitin Sawhney. I feel that his internal musical world and my internal visual world connect on a very deep level.
Curated by Zuleka Gallery and Flora Fairbairn
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WHAT I’VE BEEN UP TO LATELY
2019-2022 Long Overdue Studio Newsletter
Iconic Works: Inspiration – National Museum of Sweden and National Museum of Norway
CLICK ON PHOTOS FOR EXHIBITION DETAILS
photo: Paul Benney’s ‘Pieta’ Oil on Canvas. (Next room in photo 1: Jeff Koon’s ‘Mona Lisa and reflecting ball’)
2020. Travelled to Copenhagen to attend the opening of ‘INSPIRATION – ICONIC WORKS, the great travelling museum exhibition curated by James Putman and Suzanne Pettersson at the Swedish National Gallery and later that year to the Finland National Museum, Helsinki. I was very happy to have my work alongside Marina Abramović, Jake & Dinos Chapman, Nancy Fouts, Mark Karasick, Ola Kolehmainen, Jeff Koons, Joseph Kosuth, Sara Masüger and Yinka Shonibare CBE among others.
My gallery Anima Mundi Gallery continues to be very supportive of my work. Please follow the links to the online and gallery exhibitions starting with ‘Scrying Mirror’ 2016, ’Protected by Alarms’ October, 2019, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ April 2020, ’Beyond Ourselves’ November 2020 ’Castles of Sand’ June 2021, ‘Thresholds’ December 2021,‘Mabon’ September 2022 and ‘Samhain’ October 2022.
December, 2020. My answer to the ‘lockdown’ gathering restrictions was to hold a winter outdoor installation; NIGHT PAINTINGS-WINTER PROJECTIONS at Snape Maltings. This projection event included large scale digital/painting, hybrid video projections on the exterior walls of the Snape buildings. All credit to artistic Director Harry Young for making it happen.
October, 2021. Viktor Wynd invited me to exhibit some small works at his The Museum of Curiosities in Hackney, London. The dark, sepulchral interior of the museum perfectly suited my work. Sounds gloomy but it worked well.
December, 2021.BUCOLIA, a group show at Colmena House. Renata and I curated this exhibition of stellar contemporary artists, which we plan to repeat as a regular fixture here.
March 2022 Seven Portraits. Surviving the Holocaust. Buckingham Palace, Queens Gallery. Honoured to be asked to paint Holocaust survivor, Helena Aronson by the then Prince of Wales for the Royal Collection.
May, 2022. ‘Once Upon a Time’, group show. Big crowds for the opening reminded me of the East Village openings in the 1980’s. Curated by Flora Fairbairn and Katie Heller at 23, Chiltern Street, London.
June, 2022. ‘Remains to be Seen’ PAUL BENNEY, KIKI SMITH, LAURENCE EDWARDS at Britten-Pears Arts, Suffolk. A major, three person exhibition, two years in the making and scheduled to coincide with the recent Aldeburgh music festival. I asked two artists I admire greatly to join me in populating several familiar and less familiar (semi derelict) spaces around the Snape Maltings campus. I’ve been informed by the Britten-Pears arts director that this exhibition drew the greatest attendance figures of any exhibition at Snape Maltings.
October, 2022. Catch this Channel 4 documentary, Antiques Yard. In episode 3, @ 30 mins. I am resurrecting or conjuring up a C17 painting of the famous Milanese hairy girl Antionetta Gonzales that’s hidden under a later Madonna and Child. This is a fascinating account and turns out to be the origin story for Beauty and the Beast!
Paul Benney- artist interview, mostly talking about ‘Speaking in Tongues’ and the Dark Mirror Series
Currently on show at the BYU Museum of Art, Utah. CLICK https://moa.byu.edu/monumental-matters Very pleased to be included in this 6 person show, including Anselm Kiefer, Georg Baselitz, Jean-Michel Basquiat and Mike Kelley UNTIL AUGUST 2023 |