The Real Refuses

Overview

Like a much much more labour-intensive profile picture, a portrait is how a person has thought someone should be seen. This is a horrible analogy, but, frankly, so too are some of the paintings at The Real Refuses.

TAP Gallery, fantastically, are for the 14th year running putting up what doesn't go into the Archibald Prize at the state gallery or the accompanying and also pretty institutional Salon Des Refuses at S.H. Ervin. Once you've culled 3000 or so entries for the Archie, Wynne and Sulman prizes down to however much can be packed into the Art Gallery of New South Wales, and had a panel select an exhibition of the very worthwhile not-quites, and you let artists submit directly to the gallery at an afternoon tea, it gets Really Interesting.

There are a few landscapes on show, but the real point is picking out who you recognise and seeing what's been done to their face. What distinguishes the 'refuses' from the 'includeds' is more to do with subject than skill: there are lovely paintings here, where people really might be looking out of the canvas at you, but you don't see the who or why other than as an exercise of the artist's (in most cases, pretty evident) talent.