Andrew McKay is a Vancouver-based artist who works in portraiture. The focus of this exhibition is a series of twenty
portraits titled Tête-à-Tête. These were produced via an exchange between McKay and ten other artists. Through various approaches as suited each pairing, McKay made a portrait of each of the ten artists, and each of these ten made a portrait of him.

The exhibition also features self-portraits that McKay has produced over the last 10 years. During this time, the
self-portraits have evolved from head and shoulders images of the artist in various mediums into portraits situating
the artist in various studios, often shown reflected in mirrors and with other self-portraits on the wall, surrounded by the ephemera of the artists’ life.

McKay’s most recent strand of self-portraiture is focused on paintings that cover or hide his true appearance, utilizing masks, costumes or uniforms. These shift the prevailing idea of self-portraiture from a focus on capturing the
‘trued essence’ of the artist, to a modest critique of the contemporary surveillance state and the prominence of identity politics in the arts, and the use of costuming allows him to push past the limits of realist depiction, complicating the reading of identity and self.

Collaborating artists:
Alisa McRonald | Andrea Manica | Chris Austin | Eris Fitz-James | Eryn Lougheed
James Lee Chiahan | Kyle Stewart | Rosemary Lee | Ryan Humphrey | Sarah Madgin