Soane Portraits

(2009-11)

Sir John Soane was a Georgian architect, responsible for designing the Bank of England amongst other projects, and credited with pioneering an austere form of Neo-classicism which has been highly influential on subsequent architects. Before his death in 1837 Soane arranged for his house, which had acted as a sort of showcase and laboratory for his architectural experiments, to be left to the nation.

Since then it has existed as a museum, more or less unchanged. The museum has always had a huge emphasis on archiving material and information from the house and museum, but it seemed strange to me that one piece of information was largely absent, a pictorial record of the many people who have maintained the museum over its near two centuries of existence. In response to this I proposed to produce a series of portraits of the staff (and staff dogs), in places around the museum of their choosing.