Portraits are the evidence of existence. They immortalise a life lived, providing an indication of the stature of the sitter - a symbol of power, position and possession, real or desired. What, then, can a portrait of a non-human, an outsider, an alien, an aberration mean? The 'sitters' exist nowhere but in the image, the 'likeness' is purely an evocation of itself.  

Portraits of Non-Humans are images of entities that have never been alive; some of them have existed as inert objects, but all have been made to appear conscious by the artist. If the uncanny is the inanimate brought to life or the animate deadened, Portraits of Non-Humans pulls in both directions, giving life with one hand and taking away our credulity with the other. The proximity to the human is the key, though. The truly monstrous is that which brushes the boundaries of human essence, and here we see that this essence comes in many forms.

John Stezaker's Palestinian hill villages and the objects in Graham Sutherland 's still lives were certainly once real, but here they seem as sentient as any sitter in spurs or ruff. George Condo's subjects, on the other hand, can only have been invented by the twists of some visceral imaginings, while Helen Frik's creatures are viewed through the prism of personal reflection. Peter Jones's toy monkeys are revived through tender brushwork, while Jonathan Allen's Christ has been resurrected as a ventriloquist dummy. Here are purely potential freaks that we might rather keep in the virtual realm of the two-dimensional.