National Portrait Gallery & Audrey Green, London.
Above: National Portrait Gallery and Audrey Green Cafe, Trafalgar Square, London June 2023. Photograph by Alan McFetridge 2023.
The National Portrait Gallery has reopened after three years and a £35 million refurbishment, which includes Daisy Green Collection’s Audrey Green cafe and Larry’s bar. East London Superlab was part of the reopening by remastering over 90 photographs from the NPG archive, which now permanently adorn two gallery floors as fine art prints.
Our role was to realise museum-grade archival prints for the interior so that visitors experience a seamless transition of photographic presentation from the gallery into the cafe and bar. Themed around the lives of Audrey Hepburn and Laurence Olivier, the interiors are a combination of lofty high ceilings and intimate lower-ground vaults within which the National Portrait Gallery Curators and Daisy Green’s creative ideas combined to illustrate the lives of people and places connected to the area and stage.
Above: Audrey Green Cafe, left to right: Margot Fonteyn by Angus McBean (1951) remastered to 1293mm x 1092mm, Audrey Hepburn by Bassano Ltd. (1950) remastered to 1724mm x 1373mm, Marie Rambert by Lord Snowdon (1976) remastered to 1395mm x 1000mm. All prints are archival ink on baryta-coated 100% cotton paper. Photographed by Alan McFetridge 2023.
We became involved initially with a consultation with artist Justin Hibbs from Daisy Green. His artistic practice blends into manifesting Daisy Green Collection's numerous award-winning Cafes and Bars across London. Much of their design success, he puts down to working directly with other artists and, in doing so, peppers contemporary art into the spaces.
By late April, we had unravelled the complexity of working the archive’s historic prints that was sensitive to the artists’ intention and presented our vision to the Directors of Daisy Green Prue Freeman and Tom Onions and NPG Curators Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Clare Freestone and Anna Starling on how to remastered the prints and make them big….really big.
The NPG refurbishment has been tremendously successful for the Arts and public access. To celebrate our involvement, we are releasing a series of blog posts, a website showcase and interviews this Autumn. Please sign up for our newsletter here or email us with details of your next exhibition here, we’d love to help and take care of it. The next blog is about the challenges of remastering to different scales.
Ngā mihi mahana,
Alan
Above: Audrey Green interior with George Harrison in Miami by Sir Paul McCartney (1964) printed to 2400mm x 3600mm. Photograph by Alan McFetridge 2023.
National Portrait Gallery’s Audrey Green Entrance: Audrey Hepburn by Cecil Beaton (1963) remastered to 1628mm x 1450mm. Photograph by Alan McFetridge 2023.