Transparency
Alberta Whittle & Hardeep Pandhal
Edinburgh Printmakers | Gallery 1
Edinburgh Printmakers | Guest-Curated by Mother Tongue
Preview 17 October 18.30-20.30, Running 18 October 2019 – 5 January 2020
Transparency is a two-person exhibition from Glasgow-based artists Alberta Whittle and Hardeep Pandhal curated by Mother Tongue, spanning print, artist moving image, drawing and installation. It responds to the architectural heritage of the Castlemills site – as a former silk factory, premises of the North British Rubber Company, and brewery – now occupied by Edinburgh Printmakers. The exhibition takes as its point of departure the physical layers of the print-making process; the buildings’ history; and considers the local built environment as a present-day testimony to Scotland’s colonial past. The exhibition’s title invokes the multiple definitions and etymological roots of the word ‘transparency,’ simultaneously i) meaning to shine a light through, ii) make easily detectible, and iii) to be open to public scrutiny, whilst transparency film is used in many printmaking methods as a means to transfer the image. Working with these three meanings in hand, the exhibition reflects upon on our current political environment, language, trade, travel, contact zones, and calls into question Scotland’s amnesia towards its colonial past. At the same time, their explorations push-back against aspects of transparency: via defacement, through otherworldly and digital simulations, and in the use of appropriated imagery.
With forthcoming commissioned texts from Aman Sandhu, Cass Ezeji and Danny Pagarani.
Please note that Edinburgh Printmakers will be closed: 23-26 December and 30 December - 02 January.
For more information, please see the Edinburgh Printmakers site.
Artist & Writer Biographies
Alberta Whittle is an artist, researcher and curator. She is a Research Associate at The University of Johnnesburg. She was a RAW Academie Fellow at RAW Material in Dakar in 2018 and is the Margaret Tait Award winner for 2018/9. Her creative practice is motivated by the desire to work collectively towards radical self-love. Inspired by diasporic conversations, Alberta considers radical self-love and collective care key methods in battling anti-blackness. Her practice involves choreographing interactive installations, using film, sculpture and performance as site-specific artworks in public and private spaces.
Alberta has exhibited and performed in various solo and group shows, including at GoMA, Glasgow (2019), Pig Rock Bothy at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh, 13th Havana Biennale, Cuba, The City Arts Centre, Edinburgh (2019), The Showroom, London (2018), National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (2018), RAW Material, Dakar (2018), FADA Gallery, Johannesburg (2018), the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (2017), FRAMER FRAMED, Amsterdam (2015), Goethe On Main, Johannesburg (2015), at the Johannesburg Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015), and BOZAR, Brussels (2014), amongst others. The Contemporary Art Research Collection at Edinburgh College of Art recently purchased several of her digital collage prints. Over 2019, Alberta will be showing her work at Studio Salgado (Sao Paolo, Brazil), displaced at The Travelling Gallery (various locations Scotland), Business as Usual at The Tyburn Gallery (London), and How flexible can we make the mouth at the DCA (Dundee). Alberta’s writing has been published in MAP magazine, Visual Culture in Britain, Visual Studies, Art South Africa and Critical Arts Academic Journal. www.albertawhittle.com
Hardeep Pandhal was born in Birmingham in 1985. He lives and works in Glasgow. He received a Leverhulme Scholarship to complete the MFA programme at The Glasgow School of Art in 2013, following which he was selected for Bloomberg New Contemporaries 2013 and Collective gallery’s 2015 Satellites programme. Recent solo exhibitions include: Paranoid Picnic: The Phantom BAME, New Art Exchange and Primary, Nottingham (2018); Self-Loathing Flashmob, Kelvin Hall, Glasgow International 2018, Glasgow; Liar Hydrant, Cubitt, London (2018); Konfessions of a Klabautermann, Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival, Berwick-upon-Tweed (2017); and A Nightmare on BAME Street, Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2017). Recent group exhibitions include: Is This Tomorrow?, Whitechapel Gallery, London (2019); 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage, New Museum, New York (2018); The House of Fame, Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham (2018); The Vanished Reality, Modern Art Oxford, Oxford (2016); and The Panj Piare Assemble, Grand Union, Birmingham (2014). He was shortlisted for the 2018 Film London Jarman Award, and was recently commissioned by Channel 4 as part of the ‘Random Acts’ series, the broadcaster’s short film strand dedicated to the arts. He has undertaken a series of residencies, including Cove Park (2018), the National Theatre of Scotland Starter Residency (2017), Hospitalfield Arts Arbroath (2016), and the Drawing Room Bursary (2015). Published responses and reflections on Pandhal’s work-to-date have been published in Vitamin T: Threads and Textiles in Contemporary Art, Phaidon (2019), 2018 Triennial: Songs for Sabotage catalogue. New Museum, Phaidon (2018), and the Kaleidoscope catalogue. Modern Art Oxford (2016). www.hardeeppandhal.com
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Aman Sandhu is an artist currently based in Glasgow. His practice includes sculpture, drawing and performance and seeks to use improvisational strategies as a catalyst for the unearthing of third-space, collaged histories. Sandhu studied at Glasgow School of Art (MFA) and Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Klasse Rita McBride). He often works in collaboration with artist and curator, Swapnaa Tamhane under the title August Fröhls. Sandhu has exhibited at Intermedia Gallery, Glasgow; Celine Gallery, Glasgow; Gardiner Museum, Toronto; Younger than Beyoncé Gallery, Toronto; FOCUS Photography Festival, Mumbai; and presentations of his pedagogical project, ELEFANT at Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach. Sandhu was an autumn resident at Hospitalfield, Arbroath in 2018, he has an upcoming solo exhibition at Intermedia Gallery, Glasgow (Sept 2019) and is included in the 2019 edition of Monitor, SAVAC’s (South Asian Visual Arts Centre) experimental film programme. From August-September 2019, he has an artist residency at Studio Pavilion at House for an Art Lover, Glasgow, where he will be further developing themes of entering, exiting and hiding in the hegemonic structures of institutional spaces, and as a place for research for a new body of work initiated by a performance of composer Julius Eastman. Further info at www.amansandhu.info
Cass Ezeji is a singer and performer from Glasgow via Nigeria and Ireland. She is one half of Sister Collective, a group whose primary aim is to raise awareness of black and ‘minority’ ethnic Scottish identities. She sings in several bands including LAPS, Golden Teacher and Jacob Yates. Laps are an electronic-dub duo that began in Glasgow’s Green Door Studio over ten years ago. Cass and Glaswegian artist Alicia Matthews began collaborating and recording together during a sound engineering course which subsequently formed their first EP. Since then, the pair have released music with MIC records (London) and DFA (New York) and have played internationally extensively including SXSW, Tate Lates, and Plisskën Festival. Their single ‘Who Me?’ was featured in Rihanna’s debut Savage X Fenty NYFW show (2018) and are currently working on their fourth release. Cass’s creative practice is balanced alongside her studies in French and Spanish at Strathclyde University. Her passion for singing and experience as a mixed-race Gaelic speaker provides an additional perspective in her on-going exploration of Afroscots identity and Scotland’s prominent role in colonialism. This includes approaches to dismantling Scotland’s public status as the historical hero and the victim (never the perpetrator). She seeks to establish ways in which Scotland can acknowledge and take responsibility for its past actions, which have profound present-day ramifications. She is currently based and studying in Spain, where she is researching the whiteness of Spanish and Latin American television and the wider implications of these racial images.
Danny Pagarani practices art, writing and music. His writing was commissioned for Inas Halabi’s Letters to Fritz and Paul at Al Ma’mal Foundation, East Jerusalem. He has also written for The Skinny and Art Review Glasgow. Danny’s multimedia practice reflects an interest in identity, history, language, experience and matter. He works with family narratives and world histories to explore intergenerational gaps and silent transmissions. Danny studied Philosophy and English at Sussex University, graduating in 2010. Danny was awarded the Fine Art Dissertation Prize from Glasgow School of Art where he graduated in 2018 from Sculpture and Environmental Art. Danny will be a resident at Hospitalfield Arts, Arbroath, this winter. His work can be found at www.dannypagarani.com
