From behind the lens: Landscapes borrowed from art history

Many artists, past and present, have been influenced by the National Gallery’s collection. Artist, art historian, and frequent contributor to the National Gallery’s events programme, Aliki Braine, is one such artist.

This online session will focus on her work’s relationship to historical landscape painting and will include a presentation of her work alongside demonstrations of her techniques and materials. There will be practical and hands-on exercises for looking at and thinking about paintings.

Mostly working with celluloid film and darkroom photography, Aliki uses simple strategies and playful tools such as stickers, paper shredders and hole punches to cut, obscure, fold or rearrange her images. These interventions aim to draw attention to the material nature of the image, but also to its formal construction and composition. Aliki’s work conducts an informed conversation with historical painting and acknowledges the debt photographic images owe to the history of Western European art.

Watch or join in as Aliki demonstrates her techniques. If you wish to participate in the practical exercises, we suggest having some of the following materials to hand:

• pencil
• ruler
• pair of scissors
• hole punch
• drawing pin
• craft knife
• cutting mat
• postcards or printouts of your favourite landscape paintings

Please note this session lasts 1.5 hours.

Aliki Braine has an MFA from The Ruskin School of Fine Art, Oxford University, an MA from The Slade School of Fine Art, London and an MA from The Courtauld Institute of Art. Recent exhibitions include solo shows in Oxford, London, Birmingham, Vienna, Madrid and Paris. Her work is featured in a number of publications including British Art and the Environment, Charlotte Gould and Sophie Mesplède (Routledge, 2022), Pauline Martin, L’Évidence, le vide, la vie; La photographie face à ses lacunes (Ithaque Editions, 2017) and Robert Shore, Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera (Laurence King Pub, 2014.) Aliki is a regular lecturer for Christie’s Education, the Wallace Collection and the National Gallery. She lives and works in London.

A recording of this event will be made available to all ticket holders in the days following the event.

This recording will be available for two weeks.

Automatic closed captioning is available for this event.