Skip to main content

Alberta Whittle - Lagareh - The Last Born

Alberta Whittle took a while to get to the Venice Biennale with her film, Lagareh - The Last Born. Originally commissioned before the world closed down due to the pandemic, Lagareh finally made the trip as part of the Barbados born, Glasgow based artist’s deep dive(pause) uncoiling memory exhibition that formed the Scotland + Venice 2022 programme. Focusing on Scotland’s connections to the Transatlantic slave trade as well as more contemporary losses of Black lives to racist violence, Lagareh has now come home, as Whittle’s labour of love tours cinemas for a series of screenings that began in September. 

 

“This is the film I've wanted to make for a long time,’ says Whittle of Lagareh. “I arrived in the UK the year Stephen Lawrence was murdered, and that always stayed with me. I remember when Sheku Bayoh lost his life, how that shook me even further, and for a long time, I wanted to find some way to really speak of these groundbreaking moments that shake you to your core.’

 

With Whittle’s film, tapestry and sculptural output acclaimed in Scotland and elsewhere, Spring 2023 sees a major overview of her work set to be held in Edinburgh at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.

 

“It's the biggest show I've ever done,’ Whittle says. “It's absolutely terrifying, but I'm so excited, because you don't often get to see a full spectrum of your work together.’ 

 

This is vindication for Whittle’s advocacy of the Black experience through her art.

 

“I've been doing work about decolonial practices and abolition for a really long time,’ she says, “and I have really noticed the conversation change from when I first started making this work. People were like, why are you talking about this, and said that no one would be interested. Now, I've really seen the conversation move on, and I think there's a greater sense of self-reflection that is possible. So I am optimistic. I think we have to just hold on to hope, and really think about these ideas in a very loving and critical way.’

 

Lagareh can be seen at Mareel, Shetland Arts, Lerwick, 27thNovember; Broadford Village Hall, Isle of Skye, 11thFebruary 2023; Ayr Town Hall, 1stMarch 2023. 

 

ends

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...
2 comments
Read more

Carla Lane – The Liver Birds, Mersey Beat and Counter Cultural Performance Poetry

Last week's sad passing of TV sit-com writer Carla Lane aged 87 marks another nail in the coffin of what many regard as a golden era of TV comedy. It was an era rooted in overly-bright living room sets where everyday plays for today were acted out in front of a live audience in a way that happens differently today. If Lane had been starting out now, chances are that the middlebrow melancholy of Butterflies, in which over four series between 1978 and 1983, Wendy Craig's suburban housewife Ria flirted with the idea of committing adultery with successful businessman Leonard, would have been filmed without a laughter track and billed as a dramady. Lane's finest half-hour highlighted a confused, quietly desperate and utterly British response to the new freedoms afforded women over the previous decade as they trickled down the class system in the most genteel of ways. This may have been drawn from Lane's own not-quite free-spirited quest for adventure as she moved through h...
Post a Comment
Read more