Zoé Whitley – författare

Chisenhale Gallery launches the second title in its Chisenhale Books series, Nikita Gale: IN A DREAM YOU CLIMB THE STAIRS. Marking the finale of Gale’s Chisenhale exhibition, her first artist’s book contains an intergenerational conversation with conceptual artist Barbara Kruger and a short meditation by Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Hilton Als. These feature alongside contributions by artist and Chisenhale Gallery alum P. Staff and Dr. Bénédicte Boisseron, author of Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question. Through the lens of a multifaceted practice, Gale examines themes of invisibility and audibility, interrogating the dynamic between performer and spectator, structure, and decay. Produced with great care, this extraordinary book is reflective of the artist’s practice. Four visual essays, hand-annotated by Gale – ‘Absence’, ‘Ruin’, ‘Silence’, ‘Dog’ – explore themes central to the work. Nikita Gale: IN A DREAM YOU CLIMB THE STAIRS deploys throw-outs, gatefolds, five different types of papers, and a subtly disruptive design to delve into Nikita Gale’s art.Text by Zoé Whitley, P.Staff, Hilton Als, Barbara Kruger and Dr. Bénédicte Boisseron.Book Design & Creative Direction by Billie Temple.

Light Break presents the first survey since 1996 of photographer Roy DeCarava, an essential figure of American art and culture, whose “poetry of vision” re-forms urban life, labor, love, and jazz into the discovery of “an intimate, emotional arc of transformation.”Though DeCarava often refrained from public discussion of his work, this catalogue provides important background into determining factors of his aesthetic sensibility—his traditional training in painting and printmaking as well as his philosophical undertakings. It brings the viewer to a consideration of contradictory precepts in DeCarava’s work that seeks resolution through tonal and structural elements within the image.Light Break presents a wide-ranging selection of DeCarava’s photographs accompanied by a preface by Zoé Whitley, an American curator based in London, and features an introduction and essay by curator and art historian Sherry Turner DeCarava. Titled “Celebration,” Turner DeCarava’s essay considers the artist’s singular poetic vision, his timeless portrayals of individuals and places, and his mastery of composition and photographic printmaking.As Whitley writes, “In making photographs, as in life, DeCarava was patient. Possessing both a peerless self-awareness and acute observational skills, he knew intuitively when to wait and when to open the camera’s shutter. In the dark room, he availed himself of these same attributes, moving with steady assurance to develop his prints so as to allow the full range of what he called his ‘infinite scale of grey tones’—often realized at the deepest end of the spectrum—to emerge slowly and fully.”Published on the occasion of two concurrent exhibitions of DeCarava’s work at David Zwirner New York in 2019, this exquisite volume showcases a dynamic range of images that underscore DeCarava’s subtle mastery of tonal and spatial elements across a wide, fascinating array of subject.

Soul of a Nation shines a bright light on the vital contribution of Black artists to a dramatic period in American art and history. In the period of radical change that was 1963 to 1983, young Black artists at the beginning of their careers in the USA confronted key questions and pressures. How could they make art that would stand as innovative, original, formally and materially complex, while also making work that reflected their concerns and experience as African Americans? This significant new publication surveys this crucial period in American art history, bringing to light previously neglected histories of twentieth-century Black artists, including Frank Bowling, Sam Gilliam, Melvin Edwards, Bettye Saar, Jack Whitten and William T. Williams. This book presents era-defining artworks that changed the face of art in America, and features substantial essays from curators Mark Godfrey and Zoe Whitley, writing on abstraction and figuration respectively. It also explores art historical and social contexts with subjects including black feminism; AfriCOBRA and other artist-run groups; the role of museums in the debates of the period; and where visual art sat in relation to the Black Arts Movement.

Enter into the vivid world of Frank Bowling and create your own inspiring art along the way!Bursting with inspiring activities, the revised and expanded Meet the Artist series of activity books introduces children to internationally renowned artists in a fun and engaging way. Every book includes a brief introduction to the artist's life followed by a series of activities that explore prominent themes and ideas in the artist's body of work. Featuring beautiful reproductions of key artworks, and illustrated by a leading contemporary illustrator, every book in the Meet the Artist series encourages children to use art as an avenue for exploring ideas and expressing their own experiences through art-making. Born in Guyana in 1936, Frank Bowling arrived in Britain in his late teens, going on to study painting at the the Royal College of Art in the same cohort as David Hockney and Derek Boshier. Bowling has led an extraordinarily colourful life spanning three continents, eight decades and countless canvases and is one of Britain's most important painters.Meet the Artist: Frank Bowling is packed with make-and-dos and inspiring activities for budding young artists. Experiment with paints and glue in ways you never imagined, make layered collages using recycling and design your own world using stencils and fantasy maps!

Print has always been an art form for everyone - relatively cheap to produce and easy to distribute, and intended to be accessible to all. It links to painting, and creative autographic expression, as well as to a tradition of satire and protest, both social and political. Above all, prints are a means of communication and cultural exchange and, in the context of Africa and the African diaspora, these qualities have had a particular resonance. The book covers the period from 1960, presenting and interpreting a variety of visual images from the V&A collections in terms of their political and social context, while also addressing their identity as art and design. It includes prints by Uzo Egonu, Carrie Mae Weems and Chris Ofili among others, as well as overtly political work, such as posters attacking the Apartheid policies of South Africa and material produced by American Black Power organizations.

Elijah Pierce (1892–1984) was born the youngest son of a former slave on a Mississippi farm. He began carving at an early age when his father gave him his first pocketknife, and throughout his life he honed his craft and created artworks that would eventually, in the 1970s, bring him national and then international fame. Elijah Pierce's America seeks to revisit the artist's oeuvre and see it in its own right, rather than as "naïve," as it was known at the time.   Through his carvings, Pierce tells his own life story, but he also chronicles the African American experience. He made his living as a barber and was also a qualified preacher; just as his barbershop was a place for gossip and meeting, so his art reflects his own and his community's concerns. His subjects ranged from politics to religion, but he seldom distinguished the race of his figures—he thought of them as everyman figures. His secular carvings show his love of baseball, boxing, comics, and movies, and reflect his appreciation for American heroes who fought for justice and liberty.   A critic summarized what Elijah Pierce's America foregrounds in Pierce's artwork: "He reduces what he wants to say to the simplest forms and compositions. They are decorative, direct, bold, and amusing. He uses glitter and all kinds of devices to make his message clear. It gives his work an immediacy that's very appealing." Accompanying a major exhibition at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, Elijah Pierce's America shines a light on the sophisticated work of an artist with a distinct and important voice.

Discover the skill, determination, and resilience of African American artist Winfred Rembert in the first widely available monograph on his powerful, profoundly original oeuvre. Born and raised in the Deep South during the time of Jim Crow law, Winfred Rembert began his full-time artistic practice at the age of fifty-one, following a life of extreme hardship that saw him survive multiple arrests, a near-lynching, and seven years on chain gangs. These harrowing experiences would prove central to the narrative of his extraordinary art—a striking visual memoir which chronicles both Rembert’s personal story and a wider history of race and injustice inAmerica. Working in carved and tooled leather—using skills he learned while incarcerated—Rembert created a unique body of powerful, autobiographical work. The first widely available monograph on the artist, this book presents Rembert’s paintings alongside contributions by curator Dr. Zoé Whitley, historian Dr. Dan Berger, poet and lawyer Reginald Dwayne Betts, and Rembert’s wife, Patsy. Serving as a comprehensive resource on the artist, Winfred Rembert is a testament to the vital space of resistance created by visual storytelling.

Joshua Leon’s first book accompanies his new commission at Chisenhale Gallery, London. The outcome of two years of writing and documenting his own research processes, the publication comprises original writing by Leon alongside archival imagery. Tracing history, memory and self across time and site, the text traverses locations including a synagogue in Bordeaux, an American bar in Vienna and a veneer factory in London’s East End to reflect on the experiences of the Jewish diaspora in Europe and the formation of contemporary Jewish identity.Throughout, archival materials and images collected by Leon–architectural blueprints, immigration documents, musical scores and family photographs–visually trace slippages between personal and wider social histories. At once a fragment, a memoir and poetic prose, The Process details the varied ideas, intellectual figures and experiences that coalesce in Leon’s work, whilst complicating the role of artistic production in acts of repair, restoration and remembrance.

Frank Bowling started as a figurative painter but he quickly moved towards larger and ever more complex abstract pieces. Influenced by his interest in the principles of mathematics and symmetry as well as experiments with staining, pouring and layering, his ambitious paintings are known for their distinctive textured surfaces and their colourful, luminous quality. Bowlings paintings embody his ongoing pursuit of change, transformation and renewal. The exhibition this book accompanied takes its title from the painting Traingone (1996). Behind Bowlings titles there is often a story or piece of wordplay linking the artwork to people, places and memories. The story behind Traingone relates to a memory of growing up in Guyana. Near a remote railway station, deep in the forest, where the trains stopped only briefly, there was an isolated hospital for lepers. The resident patients often went to the station to peddle their goods, but frequently they didnt make it before the train was off again and the cry would go up, Train gone! The title also alludes to saxophonist John Coltrane, a.k.a. Trane (1926 1967), whose music was ever-present in Frank Bowlings studio. This book was published in conjunction with his exhibition at Spritmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden.