Facing up to the Eighties - an exhibition of portraits

Milly Mitchell-Anyon

Jeffrey Harris ‘The Prisoner of Love’ 1982 private collection

Mary McIntyre Muldoon and Chainsaw Sculpture

Paul Rayner Portrait as Dorian Grey

Pat Hanley ‘Observer (Self-Portrait)’ 1984 private collection.

Unknown Artist Muldoon as a Burger

The flashy 1980s are remembered for being wildly over the top - big hair and big shoulder pads, Dynasty, Duran Duran and Michael Jackson.

But in Aotearoa it was also a decade of protests and change, from the 1981 Springbok rugby tour protests and Rob Muldoon's Think Big projects, to Rogernomics and the Homosexual Law Reform. 

A curator for The New Zealand Portrait Gallery, Milly Mitchell-Anyon has gone in search of portraits in public and private collections for an exhibition called Face Time: Portraits from the 1980s.

Milly tells Lynn Freeman she was excited to take up the challenge of curating the show.

FaceTime: Portraits of the 1980s opens on the 25th of November at the New Zealand Portrait Gallery Te Pūkenga Whakaata, Shed 11, Wellington Waterfront.