Alberta Whittle

Nicola Vassell Gallery is pleased to present Alberta Whittle's Respectability Won’t Save You: A Caribbean Haunting, an exhibition curated by Arianna Nourse.

Alberta Whittle’s ancestors arrived in the 1920s, and earlier; but by the 1960s, they’d truly arrived. Bridgetown was culture, Bridgetown was class. Bridgetown was respectable–and respectability? Respectability was safety.

For the artist’s grandfather, Gladstone Fitzroy Barker, there would be no combing of hair outside; no shiny clothes on his family before 6 pm; and certainly no island mysticism. In silken armour - the cousins hoped - no officer would frisk you. Follow the codes - the aunties whispered - and nobody gets hurt.

—"How to Avoid Becoming a Snake" by Arianna Nourse © 2022

Alberta Whittle (b. 1980) is representing Scotland at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia. She was born in Bridgetown, Barbados and currently lives and works in Glasgow. Her creative practice is motivated by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key methods in battling anti-Blackness. She choreographs interactive installations, using film, sculpture, and performance as site-specific artworks in public and private spaces.

Alberta Whittle has exhibited and performed in extensive solo and group shows, including Revisiting the work of Black Artists in Scotland, GoMA, Glasgow (2022); Sex Ecologies, Kunsthall Trondheim (2021); We Are History, Somerset House (2021); Life Between Islands, Tate Britain (2021); Here Be Dragons, a Reprise, Copperfield, London (2021), Congregation (creating dangerously remix), Grand Union (2020); In the Castle of My Skin, EastsideProjects (2020); How flexible can we make the mouth, DCA (2019);Stalking the Image: Margaret Tait and Her Legacy, GoMA, Glasgow (2019); Useless, Pig Rock Bothy at the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh (2019); 13th Havana Biennale, Cuba (2019); Business as Usual, TyburnGallery — Now Tyburn Foundation, London (2019); Another Country, The City Arts Centre, Edinburgh (2019); There's something in the conversation that's more interesting than the finality of (a title), The Showroom, London (2018); Transforming Spaces, National Art Gallery of the Bahamas (2018); Corpus Callosum, RAW Material, Dakar (2018); Curatorial Care: Humanising Practice, FADA Gallery, Johannesburg (2018); Right of Admission, the Apartheid Museum, Johannesburg (2017); Embodied Spaces, Framer Framed, Amsterdam (2015); The Cradle, Goethe On Main, Johannesburg (2015); the Johannesburg Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015), and Where We're At! Other Voices on Gender, Bozar, Brussels (2014), amongst others.