LONDON.- This weekend the National Portrait Gallery opens Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture, a new programme of contemporary commissioning made possible through a continued partnership with the CHANEL Culture Fund.

The new works in a variety of media reclaim untold narratives for display alongside works from the National Portrait Gallery’s historic collection. Installation, textile, painting, collage, drawing and film works will be shown across galleries from 6 September 2025, coinciding with a programme of special events with participating artists.

Visitors to the Gallery on Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 September can drop in to take part in a variety of free activities, including a curator-led tour, pop-up artist talks and a silhouette booth run by British artist and Director of UCL Slade School of Fine Art, Mary Evans. Displayed in the Main Entrance, Evans’ commission responds to the Gallery’s collection of historic silhouettes, and over the weekend she will be creating portraits featuring members of the public for display across the space. Paper cut-outs will traverse the walls of the Gallery, with the artwork evolving over time to reflect the many visitors who visit.

In Gallery 29, a series of paintings will be exhibited by the South African artist Ravelle Pillay, who uses archival and family research and imagery to inform her figurative works. Exploring her own family’s recorded and oral histories, the paintings will respond to the legacies of colonialism and migration, and the ways in which they haunt our present.

Continuing through the Gallery, visitors will encounter work by British artist Charmaine Watkiss in Room 9, exploring the botanical legacies of the Caribbean. Watkiss has created a companion piece to the National Portrait Gallery’s painting of physician, botanist and collector Sir Hans Sloane from 1736.

Scientific contribution is also the focus of Iranian-born Soheila Sokhanvari’s commission displayed throughout the Collection, which celebrates four individuals connected to the world of science from the seventeenth century to the present day, including groundbreaking astronomer and astrophysicist Professor Margaret Burbridge FRS.

Inspired by the Gallery’s collection of cartes-de-visites, the Panama-based artist Giana De Dier will create a series of small photomontage portraits for display alongside the historic cartes, highlighting contemporary changemakers from Britain’s African and Caribbean diaspora who are making a difference within their communities today.

Małgorzata Mirga-Tas has created five large-scale textile works for display in the NPG’s History Makers gallery, made with second-hand clothing and fabrics to offer a vibrant representation of Romani figures.

Working in film, Turner-Prize winning artist Helen Cammock has used the National Portrait Gallery’s archive, collections and building as a starting point to bring together a cast of characters and images across time to prompt conversations around presence, absence and the process of erasure.

American artists Mary Reid Kelley and Patrick Kelley have produced a two-channel video diptych, portraying a tragicomic lovers’ ‘discourse’ between Admiral Lord Horatio Nelson and Lady Emma Hamilton. Displayed in the Gallery’s Duveen Wing, on either side of an enfilade, the diptych is in direct dialogue with the historic portraits of the couple, reconsidering their traditional representations as the nation’s hero and a glamorous temptress.

Artists First: Contemporary Perspectives on Portraiture will be on display until August 2026. The programme builds upon the legacy of Reframing Narratives: Women in Portraiture, the National Portrait Gallery’s three-year partnership project with the CHANEL Culture Fund that enhanced the representation of women across the National Portrait Gallery’s displays.