Sorrowing Cloth – Winner of the Valeria Sykes Award 2020

Sorrowing Cloth – Winner of the Valeria Sykes Award 2020

Joanna Whittle
Oil on copper
10cm x 15cm
£1,000

SOLD

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Joanna Whittle is a member of the Contemporary British Painting Society. She studied at Central Saint Martins and Royal College of Art and has had solo exhibitions at Agnews (London) and the Museum of London, whilst taking part in numerous group exhibitions including, since 2018, Sidney & Matilda Gallery and Bloc Projects (Sheffield), Collyer Bristow and Herrick Gallery (London) and Portico Library Gallery (Manchester). Her work has also been exhibited in John Moores Painting Prize (2018), and Royal Academy (2019). In 2019 she was joint winner of the Harley Open Prize and Winner of the Contemporary British Painting Prize, exhibiting at the Huddersfield Art Gallery and ASC Gallery (London). In 2019 she was selected for the Freelands Artist Programme, a funded residency, working with the Freelands Foundation (London) and Site Gallery (Sheffield). In 2020 she was awarded Arts Council funding for her project ‘Between Islands’ which included working with the Portland Collection and the history of the Welbeck Estate which culminated in a solo exhibition at the Harley Gallery (Nottinghamshire).

The Painting Sorrowing Cloth explores the ideas surrounding memorial structures and how places gain significance as sites of mourning. I am interested in the rituals carried out in these places and how the result of these rituals is deposited in the landscape, creating evolving structures. The impermanence of these structures and those in many of my other paintings give the sense that they are already falling apart and disappearing like fragile and temporary ruins. I am also interested in how these structures, usually tents or facades, conceal things within or behind and seem to imply furtive activity. There is always an unsettling sensation that something has been hidden, or a foreboding that something is about to occur. This piece is also painted on copper which creates an odd sense of luminosity that enhances the idea of a ceremonial site.

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