Turner Prize winner Steve McQueen makes his presence felt in London with his must-have Grenfell movie at the Serpentine Galleries (until May 10). McQueen will also cause a stir in June with a new portrait of former Tate director and Arts Council England chairman Nicholas Serota, to be displayed in the newly refurbished National Portrait Gallery. The work is McQueen’s first to enter the gallery’s collection. The eye-catching portrait, which shows Serota in a double-exposure image with two faces, was commissioned with support from Scott Collins, managing director of investment firm Summit Partners, in partnership with Outset Contemporary Art Fund. “This portrait of Steve McQueen references the history of still photography and its intersection with film and film, but as always in his work, Steve adds new language to that tradition, choosing to depict me from a way that literally shows more than one side,” Serota said in a statement. The work, which will hang in the gallery’s Weston Wing, nods to early 20th-century Futurist art ( Umberto Boccioni made a similar two-sided image around 1911 called Ritratto polifisiognomico by Umberto Boccioni).
