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The Sheffield culture guide written by in-the-know locals

Platform Instagram Takeover: Joanna Whittle

Join painter Joanna Whittle for her Site Gallery Platform Instagram Takeover. The artist uses her takeover to explore developmental parts of her practice – research, drawing, printmaking and ephemeral pieces – rather than finished material.

Joanna's takeover ran 22–29 April – see each of her posts below and follow Site Gallery on Instagram for more artist takeovers.

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So I am starting the takeover with a painting in progress- Black Gate This is a piece for a project I am working on with the Harley Gallery and Portland Collection. This is an arts council funded project which will culminate in an exhibition which is currently postponed. The Harley Gallery and collection are situated within the Welbeck estate which itself is enfolded by Sherwood forest. There is such an undisturbed and settled mystery to it- that pulls you in through hidden gateways and underground tunnels and almost folds again around you. This painting is a threshold- but also a façade. It both lures and repels. I am also interested in chimerical aspects of the paintings- in this half light were vegetation becomes fabric, fleshy leaves harden to stone and ossify. As the lockdown lengthens- it feels like this remote world evolves daily in to a much stranger place. #instagramtakeover #SiteGallery #PlatformArtistResidency #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #harleygallery #portlandcollection #welbeckestate #sherwoodforest #painting #ceramics #Sheffield #landscapepainting #BetweenIslands #facade #gateway #threshold

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@jowhittleart For my ceramic pieces I have been working on a long term project creating a body of Do><ian Whittware with variations such as Rustic Pastijware. These are artefacts from an unknown and disappeared society and enable me to explore undercurrents in the paintings through prescriptive and decorative languages. The designs for these ceramics have been created through an exploration of traditional ceramic wares and designs including creamware, pearlware and whiteware. More recently I have been focused on Liverpool Creamware after seeing the collection at the @walkerartgallery There is something heavy and foreboding about the designs- with moral but also esoteric undertones. For recent work I have been looking at these designs in combination with some of the rococo wildness of the Sevres ceramics in the Portland Collection. These drawings are sketches for some new ‘artefact’ pieces and some aspects have been woven in from elements of the collection – weaving together new territories. They explore these unmapped territories- alchemic activities- hidden rituals. I am really interested in things hidden in plain sight- where intricately designed worlds become ultimately impenetrable. Image 1 Do><ian Plate Design- Ritual Animal Skin, Bowl, Barrel Vessel, Fire Image 2- Do><ian Plate Design- Fire and Hovering Ball #ritual #alchemy #Do><ia #Do><ianWare #Pastijware #instagramtakeover #SiteGallery #PlatformArtistResidency #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #painting #ceramics #Sheffield #landscapepainting #BetweenIslands @jowhittleart

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Image 1: Painting in Progress– Leaf Folded Tomb Images 2: Flowers- Newcastle-Under-Lyme crem The night paintings These are vanitas paintings of a sort - velvet dark with blood dropped colour. Fairgrounds at shut down, empty grass avenues, with a crushed smell rising up in to a settling night. Laying itself down on green blue grass. The lights still on. And leaves garland flowering tombs. Cloth-wrapped in white, bulb bleached. There is a handling with paint where the electric of lights can be of the same substance as a wreath of flowers. #night #tomb #leaf #garland #light #wreath #instagramtakeover #SiteGallery #PlatformArtistResidency #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #painting #landscapepainting #jowhittleart

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SHELL I have been making shell artefacts base don items form the Portland collection. This is an unfired piece using terra sigillata- made by taking the finest particles of clay from the clay body- creating a muted sheen. These shell pieces look like stone. They also look like pulhamite Pulhamite is an anthropic rock – invented by James Pulham in the 1830s and there is a tunnel of it at the Welbeck estate. Surreal and ivy mouthed. ALCHEMY That man can make rock That clay becomes stone #clay #stone #ceramics #material #pulhamite #alchemy #Welbeck #instagramtakeover #SiteGallery #PlatformArtistResidency #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #gold #clothofgold #painting #ceramics #Sheffield #landscapepainting @jowhittleart

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Its always hard for me to talk about the tents. I think they are woven so richly with so many threads of my thinking. They hold everything (everything) within their fragile confines. They are hallucinations painted solid. So one thing- Again a metronome phrase pulses each time I make a painting 'And all the countless things I shall remember Lay mummy-cloths of silence round my head' Alun Lewis Mummy cloths: ‘A fabric like crepe for mourning-dress, having a cotton or silk warp and a woollen weft’ They are mournful and they are mourning. And I always think they are very cool to the touch. Image- Work in progress #tent #silk #fabric #AlunLewis #Goodbye #rain #mud #WIP #removal #transient #permanentimpermanence #mourning #instagramtakeover #SiteGallery #PlatformArtistResidency #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #painting #ceramics #Sheffield #landscapepainting @jowhittleart

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Drawing Drawings as preparatory sketches are useful but I usually do that on the painting itself – working through a series of reiterations. But mostly the drawings are separate worlds and themselves. Often much smaller than the paintings they become more intricate and hallucinatory. Images 1: Grotto- Fine Clay with stain -drawing (terra sigillata) , postcard, 10 x 15 cm. Clay and stain - #deliberate #decalcomania 2: Cresswell – Witch Cave – flooded , postcard, oil on paper 10 x 15 cm Oil sketch- oily sepia 3::Greendale Oak- black ribbon-watercolour, 6 x 8cm I think about Max Ernst, and lost civilisations and the floating forms of Joseph Beuys #decalcomania #surrealism # ink #water #clay #defocculant #cave #grotto #pulhamite #rococco #Ernst #Beuys #creswellcraggs #instagramtakeover #sitegallery Platform #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #joannawhittle @jowhittleart

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Painting #Workinprogress Much of Monday’s painting has already been concealed beneath this current state…and in weeks to come it will be something different again. The paintings go through many iterations- I do think of them as long drawn out battles- sometimes with small victories hard won- only to be drawn back in to bloody skirmishes. The worst aspect of a new painting are elements I like -I have to fight round them- they remain as a phantom through many layers, the ghost at the feast, before they are finally obliterated. I have become more brutal with them. I look instead for those tiny bits of grit from which the pearl grows. These acts of obliteration often take place under the cover of darkness- in an ambush late at night. Daytime painting is for those tranquil times of delicate folds or bucolic leaves – with the darkness beneath. ________abgrund________ When I finally get to the end of a painting, the moment of revelation can often be muted, just an act of acquiescence… but occasionally, the painting emerges, injured, but glimmering and everyone throws down their weapons. Perhaps there is another way to make painting, but I like the fight. And perhaps the biggest challenge, in times like these, is to determine if the battle has any meaning. Heidegger – And what are poets for in these destitute times? #obliterate #conceal #fragonard #whatarepoetsfor #heidegger #gustavmetzger #destitute #autodestructiveart #abgrund #abyss #autodestructiveart #WIP #instagramtakeover #SiteGallery #PlatformArtistResidency #FreelandsArtsistProgramme #painting #ceramics #Sheffield #landscapepainting

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