Exhibition featuring 40-metre animations to open at National Gallery next year

A new exhibition of 40-metre animated projections based on pictures from the National Gallery is set to open later this year.

The 25 striking new animations are designed to immerse the viewer in a panorama of nine large video projections, played on a continuous loop.

They are based on an idiosyncratic selection from famous paintings in the National Gallery in London, and the Holburne Museum in Bath.

The project, titled My Reality is Different, has been created by Nalini Malani, the first artist to receive the National Gallery’s Contemporary Fellowship, and supported by Art Fund.

The exhibition is due to open at the National Gallery from March 2 to June 11 2023, but will open in Holburne Museum this October.

The 25 striking new animations are designed to immerse the viewer in a panorama of nine large video projections, played on a continuous loop (Art Fund/PA)

Pictures by Caravaggio and Bronzino in the National Gallery’s collection, and by Jan van der Venne and Johann Zoffany in the collection of the Holburne Museum are among those to have inspired the animations.

The images have been transformed by hand-drawn animations, made using an iPad that reveal and conceal different aspects of the paintings to rediscover them from an alternative and more critical point of view.

As well as the sequences inspired by the paintings, Malani has made fictitious portraits of the marginalised in society, that appear in between the animations.

Dr Gabriele Finaldi, director of the National Gallery, said: “Nalini Malani fixes her gaze on paintings from the western canon in the National Gallery and in our partner museum, The Holburne in Bath, to offer a visually striking multi-layered critique of the tradition they represent and many of the assumptions that underpin it.”

The project, titled My Reality is Different, has been created by Nalini Malani, the first artist to receive the National Gallery’s Contemporary Fellowship (Art Fund/PA)

Dr Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne Museum, added: “It is a great honour for the Holburne to have been selected as the inaugural partner in the National Gallery’s Contemporary Fellowship programme and to be working with an artist of Nalini Malani’s stature.

“I cannot think of a more appropriate artist to engage with the Holburne’s eclectic collection that is replete with transnational stories and conversations.

“We are deeply grateful to the National Gallery, Art Fund and, of course, Nalini for this wonderful opportunity.”

The exhibition will run in Bath on October 7 2022 until  January 8 2023, before moving to London.