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If his social media pages are anything to go by, Queensland’s education minister loves taking selfies.
Now one has leapt off the screen, becoming the unlikely inspiration for a painting that young artist Angel Sadik hopes will soon appear in a Brisbane gallery.
Dubbed The man behind the title, the circular painting of Education and Arts Minister John-Paul Langbroek has been entered in the Brisbane Portrait Prize’s Next Gen category.
Sadik, the vice-captain at Corinda State High School, said she selected the selfie snapshot as an homage to the minister.
“He does this thing wherever he is … a 0.5x or whatever it is,” she said.
Sadik is referring to the fish-eye-style selfie created by placing a phone camera on a 0.5x zoom setting – allowing more of the photographer’s surroundings to appear in the picture – which can frequently be seen on the long-standing Queensland MP’s social accounts.
Langbroek’s happy snaps feature the grinning minister next to a range of people, from students to community figures and federal parliamentarians.
“It’s just a nice way of bringing people together … it’s like an inclusive signature move,” Sadik said.
Rendered in oil paints on sanded plywood, the portrait was a study on image, Sadik said.
However, she said the viewer decided exactly whose image that was.
“There are two cameras in the piece,” she said. “The circular canvas was like a camera lens, to represent how the outer society views him.
“You can view it in this perspective … [that] you’re looking outwards at him.”
The second camera is the phone itself. “That’s more of a self representation, the way he views himself,” she said. “It’s just to do with how you view him as a person.”
The 17-year-old said she first considered Langbroek as a possible portrait subject when he visited her school in late October last year – stopping to take a few 0.5x ministerial selfies.
The minister had called a press conference at the school, watched by the then incoming school vice captain Sadik and other members of Corinda’s student leadership team.
Sadik said she was struck by the minister’s comfort in front of multiple news cameras, particularly when fielding questions about the state’s “best and final” pay offer, made to teachers that morning.
“He was just so composed and that really influenced me a lot … I wanted to represent him in a lens that really shows the man behind the camera,” Sadik said.
When the minister again visited the school in February this year to sit for the portrait, she said she uncovered his “less intimidating” human side.
Speaking to this masthead in February, Langbroek said he had been flattered by the offer, and felt it suited his ministerial portfolios of arts and education.
“I’m interested to hear how Angel’s going to portray me, given that she doesn’t do what we’d call traditional works of art,” the minister said.
Sadik’s past entries, in year 10 and 11, included mixed media self-portraits using photography, acrylic paint and her own hair.
She said her art teacher, Pam Leech, along with friends and family, had been huge supports as she created the piece.
The Brisbane Portrait Prize will announce finalists for the main and Next Gen prizes on September 5 ahead of a gallery opening and unveiling of the winners later in the month.
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