Portrait of Sophie Wishart by @natalinadisegni

At its surface, Portrait Exchange resembles a life drawing class. There’s paper, pencils, and people watching and drawing. However, the closer you look, the more you realise that this resemblance is only formal. Its function and intent are something different altogether. There’s no teacher, no single subject, and no anatomical demonstration or technical critique. The role of the artist and the sitter dissolve into mutual observation, and it is this dissolution that defines the event.

Three days after a handmade poster cello-taped to a telephone pole caught my eye, I arrived at the event’s current abode, El Faro gallery. After walking up a flight of stairs off King Street, towards a lighthouse mural in blue, I saw Jaslyn Brown, the event’s founder, standing near the entrance by a lighthouse strewn with portraits, checking people in. Fairy lights were trailed over the smooth concrete floors, which were also adorned with an eclectic collection of patterned rugs and tasselled pillows. There was a single table in the middle of the room. It was square in shape, wide and close to the ground like an oversized coffee table, laid with pencils and pens. On its left was a DJ set, yet to begin its ambient song — instead the room was filled with quiet chatter between the few people who were already there.

There was no fixed point of attention, no podium or stage or person on display, the room unfolded laterally, unstructured and informal, open to improvisation. However, this was not the case when the event began three years ago.

I got the chance to sit down with Jaslyn a week after I attended the event and picked her brain about the origins and evolution of Portrait Exchange. Inspired by her previous job as a life drawing class facilitator, Jaslyn said “I saw no reason not to do it”. It all began at a rooftop bar in Glebe. There, Portrait Exchange followed a more more linear seating approach. People would sit across from each other at a long table, and she’d guide the sessions more deliberately. But since then, Portrait Exchange has shifted across venues. Jaslyn noted, “it’s funny how a space can really impact the feel of it”. At one point, it took place in a vintage clothes shop in Marrickville where amongst the chaotic crowd of clothes and awkward, tight spaces, it “felt more like a party. […] The structure was blasted into pieces… but in a beautiful way.” In its present iteration, the open gallery space at El Faro, which she loved to in December of last year, allows for stronger focus on the act of portraiture. The freedom to draw the unsuspecting subject from across the room balances fluidity with calm and allows people the opportunity to access everybody in the space, both visually and socially.

Historically, the portrait has functioned as a symbol of permanence, prestige and power. From the Fayum mummy portraits that supposedly guide souls into the afterlife, to the Rococo oil paintings that adorned palatial walls, portraiture has always implied worth. The subject is often a figure of authority, their features immortalised through the labour of a trained artist. Even in life drawing classes, vestiges of this hierarchy remain: one person is seen, the rest look. Observation is one-directional. Portrait Exchange dismantles these conventional roles. Everyone draws, and everyone is drawn. There is no assumption of expertise.

In rejecting this hierarchy, the event repositions the portrait as an act of encounter rather than capture. When I asked Jaslyn what most differentiates Portrait Exchange from life drawing, she said, “You’ve involved, you’re being drawn […] There are plenty of really amazing life drawing classes, [life drawing] has a similar function but what really makes it different is you’re actually receiving art at the end of it for you specifically… on everyone’s own terms how they want to engage with it.”

The absence of a fixed subject creates a sense of social leveling which contrasts with traditional settings. Where the artist is often authoritative or objectifying, here it is reciprocal. No participant is more worthy of representation than the other; the event removes the portrait from its historical role as a marker of historical significance or power and returns it to something more immediate, a record of attention.

This accessibility is both philosophical and material. Jaslyn spoke to the mythology surrounding art and how, for many, there is a widely held belief that everyone who is an artist is born as such. Jaslyn described how part of what makes Portrait Exchange so important to her is that it isn’t just an art event, but also a re-entry point for some people estranged from drawing. As someone who has gone through ebbs and flows with her own artistic process, she empathises with the fact that there are few low-pressure environments available for people to enter (or re-enter) into the art world.

To Jaslyn, this is often a matter of access and of resources, so she wanted to provide a space to resolve this. Jaslyn believes that everyone has something to gain from drawing, “if not from the drawing, from the process of connecting with someone new in that way.”

What makes Portrait Exchange distinct is not only that is disrupts traditional structures, but that it does so in service of connection. Here, drawing is not a display of mastery but an act of attention. Participants must observe closely, often for several minutes, someone they have never met. “It’s a weird kind of platonic intimacy,” Jaslyn noted. “It exists in its own category of experiences.”

Unlike conventional drawing which often emphasises anatomical accuracy or artistic refinement, Portrait Exchange is unconcerned with outcome. The portraits produced were varied, some gestural, others precise, many ambiguous.

Their value lies not in technical skill but what they record: a moment of sustained focus. Often, you wouldn’t realise someone was drawing you until you felt a gentle tap on the shoulder and saw a stranger beaming at you, leaf in hand. Each paper felt like a fun house mirror. “Sometimes I think the person was drawing themselves more than they were drawing me.” This blurring of self and other is not accidental. In an age defined by mediated interaction and self-curation, being closely observed by a stranger with no screen, no filter and no expectation is disarming, Jaslyn hopes that her event can serve as a grounding and centring antidote to the fragmentation of society in the current digital age.

This event carves out a rare space where presence precedes performance, and where the gaze becomes a means of mutual recognition.

Portrait Exchange brings the act of drawing out of the academy and into the everyday. It offers the opportunity to make art and to participate in a grounding experience of reciprocity and attention. The event’s informality does not denote a lack of seriousness, but a conscious resistance to the exclusions often embedded in artistic spaces. By removing hierarchy and decentralising expertise, Portrait Exchange invites participants to consider the portrait as not a symbol of prestige but as a gesture of recognition.

A very honoured thank you to all the lovely artists that dedicated some time to depicting yours truly, and for more information on Jaslyn’s work and the upcoming Portrait Exchange events, please visit the Portrait Exchange Instagram: @portrait_exchange

Designed by Sophie Wishart

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