Turner-prize co-winning artist Alberta Whittle produced RESET at the height of lockdown, filming across Scotland, South African and Barbados and responding to the immediate context of the Black Lives Matter movement, the global pandemic and the climate emergency. The film skillfully connects emergent fears of contagion, moral panic and xenophobia with a call to action – a demand – to face and heal injustices and cultivate hope in hostile environments.
RESET culminates with the image of the ‘garden’ as a utopian space of re-learning, re-connecting and resetting, animated by Mele Broomes’ powerful solo performance. Shot at Jupiter Artland, Whittle coordinated the filming remotely from Barbados, where she herself was in lockdown, weaving RESET together through contributions by writers, performers, fellow artists and musicians: Sekai Machache, Mele Broomes, Matthew Arthur Williams, Christian Noelle Charles, Ama Josephine Budge, Yves B Golden, Anushka Naanyakkara, Sabrina Henry, Richy Carey and Basharat Khan, who Whittle refers to as her accomplices.
A group show entitled RISE, featuring the aforementioned artists, will coincide with Alberta Whittle’s solo exhibition of RESET at Jupiter Artland this summer.
Still from Alberta Whittle’s RESET, 2020. Image courtesy of Alberta Whittle. Still from Alberta Whittle’s RESET, 2020. Image courtesy of Alberta Whittle. Still from Alberta Whittle’s RESET, 2020. Image courtesy of Alberta Whittle. Still from Alberta Whittle’s RESET, 2020. Image courtesy of Alberta Whittle. Still from Alberta Whittle’s RESET, 2020. Image courtesy of Alberta Whittle.
