Brian Curtin

When I asked Brian how to find his house, his instructions were simple: “Tell the motorcycle driver to take you to the farang house. He’ll know.”
I arrived on a hot April afternoon feeling more nervous than usual. Although Brian and I had known each other for years, and shared much in common as lecturers who have both lived in Thailand for more than two decades, this portrait felt different. Brian's life partner, Dr Be Takern Pattanopas, had passed away only a few months earlier.

The shoot would take place in the house they had shared together, and I worried about crossing the fine line between documenting grief and intruding upon it. A curator, writer, and academic, Brian Curtin moved to Thailand in 2000 with Be, an artist and academic whom he had met while they were both students in the UK. Walking through the house, I realised Be was everywhere, even in his absence; somehow, it reassured me. From his ceramics, pictures, the house itself, Be lingered through our conversation too.

On the wall, I noticed a photograph of Brian and Be, taken more than fifteen years ago by Piyarat Piyapongwiwat in the very same room. It became the starting point for our shoot. Ten years earlier, I had gone through my own grief after losing my partner. Standing in that house, I found myself returning to familiar questions. What do we do with someone’s belongings? Their clothes? Their legacy? What does moving forward actually look like? Brian’s way of navigating grief is quite particular, and fitted for a curator and art critic.

Recently, he commissioned a young painter to make an unidealised portrait of him, refusing flattery in favour of honesty. I wondered where mine fit; it is more a collaboration than a commission. At the end of the session and after a few more gins, Brian also shared that friends really helped during those hard times. He had encouraged friends to visit and organised dinner, reminding him of a line from Mrs Dalloway: “Always giving parties to cover the silence.”