Scottish artist Kirsty Whiten is celebrating the new androgyny in Wronger Rites – The Quing of the Now Peoples – Book Launch and Show
Artist Kirsty Whiten is publishing a limited edition book of colour plates, accompanied by text and poetry. Wronger Rites will be launched on 19th August during the Edinburgh Arts Festival 2016 at the Arusha Gallery.
Original artworks from the book will feature in the exhibition, which runs from the 20th – 30th August.
Wronger Rites depicts in detailed lavish colour a set of elaborate rituals performed by characters she calls the Now Peoples, overseen by the spectacular and gender-defying priestess, the Quing. Contemporary and disturbing, her work explores the artist’s fascination with rituals from all cultures, drawing inspiration from elements of anthropology, psychology and ancient traditions.
Growing up in a family of scientists, her father was Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at St Andrew’s University and her mother is a lecturer in human anatomy. Whiten has spent her life absorbed in the study of human existence, physicality and forms of storytelling. Obsessed with the lines between animals and humans, Whiten started making ‘imagined’ anthropological objects. Images of centaurs and cross-cultural hybrids appeared in her work along with images of boys in hoodies. Everyday people merged into the gods and deities of her present work.
Made up of drawings, watercolours and large scale oil paintings, Wronger Rites illustrates a utopian vision of a society in which gender is universal and key stages of life are celebrated with a spectacular and often shocking ceremony.
The recurring theme of Whiten’s work is that of a world in need of ritual to celebrate freedom and gender. Whiten asks us to celebrate our universal needs and our oneness with our past, present and future. Her work deviates and deconstructs social norms, enabling us to envisage freedom with sexuality and gender. Her work plays with ideals of beauty and adornment and demonstrates a fierce and earthy sexuality in the new androgyny.
Whiten’s work is confrontational but bright, tender and joyful. With skill and detail she invokes ancient religious iconography with her use of animal masks and costume. In Humanimal Drag, 2015 the masked figures resemble Breughel’s vivid comic and grotesque depictions. The balancing, tumbling and dancing figures reminiscent of the body techniques and tricks of primitive cultures and ancient ceremonies, the roots of which are lost in the deep time of immemorial tradition and practiced in temples, royal courts and more recently the circus acts of the last century.
Kirsty Whiten says “The work attempts to link us to our ancestors and other humans globally, drawing new archetypes from the language of myth and costume. I am challenging the notion of petite and polite femininity and the way men have been excluded in this culture from being able to adorn themselves. Androgyny now is universal, I celebrate that.” The Quing of the Now Peoples, 2015 portrays a vast and spectacular man, balancing elegantly on tiptoes and crowned with feathers and rowanberries, primitive but elegant.
She continues “I’m striving to make frank images of people, dealing with their psychology and socially constructed behaviour; making the viewer aware of the sexuality, control and neuroses underneath appearance. I aim to discomfort the viewer by presenting a character very directly and intimately.”
The 90-page hard-cover art book has been designed by ZAG Books, a young graphic design company in Glasgow, printed by Bell and Bain and has been funded by a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign.
Whiten graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1999 and spent a year in Paris at La Cite Internationale des Arts. Since then she has exhibited regularly in Edinburgh, Glasgow (Recoat Gallery), London (Stolenspace Gallery) and internationally.
Gallery
Arusha Gallery, 213A Dundas St, Edinburgh EH3 6QG
Dates
Private View 19 August 2016
20 August 2016 – 30 August 2016
Times
Monday – Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 1pm – 5pm
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