Portraits
2004
Canvas stretchers, fibre-glass insulation
Winchester, Hampshire

A series of arresting ‘portraits’ comprising of sheets of fibre-glass insulation pulled around canvas stretchers of varying proportions. Each portrait’s dimensions were different, and each was quite large by traditional portraiture standards suggesting that the subject is noteworthy and worth investing in, for whatever reason.

Portraits were executed at a time when Mayhew was creating a lot of work with fibre-glass insulation, intrigued by its qualities, and the notion that it is the essential, ‘hidden’ material that shapes our lives, is at once essential, and at the same time a threat, and serves a purpose in the construction industry that fat does in the human body.