Portrait of South Shields film director Sir Ridley Scott to be displayed at Newcastle's Laing gallery

A portrait of the acclaimed South Shields film director Sir Ridley Scott is going on show at the Laing Art Gallery in Newcastle.

The portrait is on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in London as part of its 'COMINGHOME' project, which sees portraits of iconic individuals being loaned to places across theUK with which they are most closely associated.

Sir Ridley was born in South Shields in 1937 and his films include Alien (1979), Thelma and Louise (1991) and Academy Award-winning drama Gladiator (2000). He was knighted in 2003 for services to the film industry and in 2018 received the BAFTA Fellowship Award.

The drawing which will be on show at the Laing Art Gallery is by Nina Mae Fowler and is part of a larger series that the National Portrait Gallery in London commissioned of leading film directors.

Julie Milne added: “This work is particularly fascinating as the artist has captured Scott’sface and his reactions as he watched a film that has special significance to him.”

The artist captured the portrait of Scott with his face lit only by the light of the screen in an otherwise darkened space. Scott chose to watch the scene from a film that was a major turning point for him and his relationship to cinema. The title of the portrait, 29:04:37, refers to the exact film frame the director was watching when Fowler captured his portrait.