In IMMA’s exhibition of works by Camille Souter and Alberta Whittle, Sarah Kelleher finds a current of joy running through both artists’ practices
The exhibition ‘Fisherwoman, Fisherwoman’ at the Irish Museum of Modern Art proposes an unusual but compelling dialogue between two artists of different generations, whose connection is less formal than temperamental. On one side is the painter Camille Souter (1929–2023), who spent much of her life between Achill Island, Co Mayo and the Calary Bog in Wicklow; on the other, the Barbadian-Scottish contemporary artist Alberta Whittle, whose practice spans film, installation, painting, performance and sculpture. What links them is a shared attentiveness to systems of power as they register in the physical world – across land use, ecology, geology and weather. Both might be understood as island artists, interested in environments shaped by extraction, vulnerability and resilience.
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