Sustainable Futures - Art + Environment

You can view the recording of the event below:

Memory, environment, geography and identity are all themes explored in the works of Alberta Whittle and Ingrid Pollard. The relationship between the human body and the natural world is a thread running through the work of both artists, and offers a different perspective on the complex topic of the climate emergency, one where social and environmental justice are inextricably linked.

In this conversation, artist Ingrid Pollard joined curator and writer Ekow Eshun, to speak more about their practice.

Unfortunately, Alberta Whittle wasn't able to participate in the discussion as planned.

About the speakers

Ingrid Pollard

Pollard is a photographer, multimedia artist and researcher. She has developed a social practice concerned with representation, history and landscape with reference to race, difference and the materiality of lens based media.

Pollard was awarded an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society in 2016, and in 2018 was the inaugural Stuart Hall Associate Fellow at the University of Essex. She has exhibited widely, and her works are included in numerous collections including the Arts Council Collection and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Alberta Whittle

Alberta Whittle is an artist, researcher and curator whose 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.

Whittle received her MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 2011, and she is currently a PhD candidate at Edinburgh College of Art. She is representing Scotland at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022 and has been awarded a Turner bursary, the Frieze Artist Award and a Henry Moore Foundation Artist Award in 2020.

Ekow Eshun

Ekow Eshun is a Ghanaian-British writer, editor and curator.

He has been the editor of numerous magazines, including Tank, Arena and Mined and was the Artistic and Executive Director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London between 2005 and 2010.

He holds an honorary doctorate from London Metropolitan University and is Chairman of the Fourth Plinth Commissioning Group, overseeing London's most significant public art programme. He writes frequently for the Guardian, Independent on Sunday, The Face and the Observer, and he is a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4.