Celestial Meditations II

Alberta Whittle (1980 - )

C-type print

2017

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© Alberta Whittle. All rights reserved, DACS/Artimage. Courtesy of the Artist and The Modern Institute/ Toby Webster Ltd., Glasgow 2024.

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  • About the work
    Location
    Country: UK
    City: London
    Place: Government Art Collection
    This is one of three Afro-futuristic photo collages by Alberta Whittle in the Collection, that perform and re-perform rhythmic actions and interactions between history and the body, producing a powerful contemporary discourse in Black and Diasporic cultural theory. These works force the veiled roles of violence and captivity in Caribbean histories into view, enmeshed with a futuristic visual language, as demonstrated with the galactical backdrop in her Celestial Meditations series. In an interview with the writer and curator Raquel Villar-Pérez in 2019, Alberta Whittle discussed the importance of ‘expanding spatiality’, and of ‘carnival’, where pleasure and masquerade mix with frightening ‘noise, and the pressure to perform’.
  • About the artist
    Alberta Whittle currently lives between Scotland, Barbados and South Africa. After studying BA Fine Art at the Glasgow School of Art, she completed an MFA in Fine Arts at Edinburgh College of Art in 2011. Working across media, an exploration of land and sea is central to her practice, as well as an affinity for history, myth and storytelling. Winner of the Margaret Tait Award in 2018/19, Whittle has exhibited widely since 2010 including at Art Night London, British Art Show 9, Liverpool Biennial, Glasgow International (2021); National Galleries of Scotland, the Havana Biennale (both 2019); and at the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (2017). In 2020 she was awarded a Turner Bursary, the Frieze Artist Award and a Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award. She is currently a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg. Whittle represents Scotland at the 59th Biennale di Venezia in 2022.
  • Explore
    Places
    Subjects
    human figure, woman
    Materials & Techniques
    aluminium, C-type photograph, print (as object name)
  • Details
    Artist
    Alberta Whittle (1980 - )
    Title
    Celestial Meditations II
    Edition
    Number 3 in an edition of 5, plus 2 artist's proofs
    Date
    2017
    Medium
    C-type print
    Dimensions
    Work unframed. Perspex fronted print, dry mounted onto aluminium. Very fragile corners and edges.
    Acquisition
    Purchased from the artist March 2021, through the Art XUK project 2020-21
    Provenance
    The artist; from whom purchased by UK Government Art Collection, 31 March 2021
    GAC number
    18969