LONDON, Aug 16 — A major new retrospective of the work of Cindy Sherman is arriving at the National Portrait Gallery, London next summer, with plans to display the photographer's groundbreaking “Untitled Film Stills” series in the UK for the first time.

Opening in June 2019, “Cindy Sherman” will explore Sherman's work from the mid-1970s to the present, featuring 180 works from public and private collections.

Cindy Sherman is best known for her use of makeup, costumes, props and prosthetics to manipulate her own appearance. The new show will focus on her use of those techniques and of material derived from a range of cultural sources to create imaginary portraits that “explore the tension between façade and identity,” according to the museum.

Sherman began her “Untitled Film Stills” series shortly after moving to New York in 1977, ultimately making 70 images in all. Sherman herself served as a model for the works, wearing a range of costumes and hairstyles to create black-and-white images that captured the aesthetic of 1950s and '60s films.

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As the National Portrait Gallery explains, “each photograph depicts its subject, namely the artist, refracted through a layer of artifice — a veneer of representation.”

The exhibition will also feature all five works in Sherman's “Cover Girl” series, completed when Sherman was a student in 1976, as well as works from “Rear Screen Projections,” “Centrefolds,” “History Portraits,” “Fairy Tales,” “Sex Pictures,” “Masks,” “Headshots,” “Clowns” and “Society Portraits.”

A range of source material from the artist's studio will be also shown in order to provide insight into her working processes.

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“Cindy Sherman” will be at the National Portrait Gallery, London from June 27 to September 15, 2019. — AFP-Relaxnews