GALLERY I & II

“Mightiest I am, but I am not alone in this cosmos of mine.
For the black hills consist of black souls, souls that have already died one thousand deaths.
Behind the stonewalls of centuries they breed their black art.
Boiling their spells in cauldrons of black gold.
Far up in the mountains, where the rain fall not far, yet the sun cannot reach.”
lyrics from 'I Am The Black Wizards' by Emperor.

Neil Clements' work displays a morbid fascination with testing the limits of supposedly extreme elements of artistic production. Here, notions of individualism are strongly linked to absolutist principles. The appropriation of romantic imagery by Black Metal bands: such as Burzum's use of 19th century painter Theodor Kittelson poses the question of how much influence evocative pictures have on the decision to demonstrate ones theories as something more than merely theatrical.
A field recording made around the site of Fantoft stave church, burnt in 1992 by members of the Norwegian Black Metal Scene provides the sparse backdrop to the paintings in the show. A solitary walk through the woods is used to describe a picturesque and meditative space just out of reach.
The paintings are delivered black on black, trademark metal, uniform and inscrutable. Yet these paintings dwell on how despite a claim to radicalism, they are constrained by their own ultimately aesthetic nature. The subjects depicted, winding paths, isolated housing, and ruins become symbols of this distance, or gap between the idea, as pure idealism, and an extreme act itself.

“Stories are at the heart of what explorers and novelists say about strange regions of the world; they also become the method colonised people use to assert their own identity and the existence of their own history”.
Edward Said
Alberta Whittle's work wants to disrupt the master narrative of the West, which traffics in myths and stereotypes of racial “Otherness”. The examination of the mystical ideologies linked to hysteria, ritual and intellectual colonisation will be fundamental in the creation of a subversive anthropological account of a fictional mythology. Alberta plans on infiltrating the domains in which they thrive: literature, official histories and ethnographies through the production of drawings, video and installation.
The film 'Fiat Lux' is informed by the 20th Century writer Jean Rhys' novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, this novel tells of the descent into perceived madness by Mr Rochester's colonial first wife Bertha who is renamed Antoinette by Rhys. Alberta's interests lie within the pageantry and symbols that we inherent and use to define our personal identity. The film includes footage shot in Barbados (Whittle's childhood home) of a spiritual baptism ritual derived from the Ethiopian high church, along with Antionette/ Bertha who is depicted within one of Alberta's own ritual being beaten with fish.
Also featured within the wall drawing are more iconic religous symbols including the madonna and those which are more personal to the artist including Ethiopian Afro angels and monkeys which seem to be making a mockery of their surroundings.

PROJECT ROOM