Platform for Art is proud to present work by Wessex Girls Youth Group at Aldgate East Station as part of an ongoing partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery’s education-outreach programme. Mine will run from 4 November.
Building on the success of Platform Portraits, a successful collaboration with the Whitechapel Gallery that attracted international press coverage in 2004, Platform for Art’s Creative Communities programme is committed to continuing to find exciting new ways to introduce art from diverse communities into the Tube environment.
For a period of six weeks, Wessex Girls Youth Group worked with artist Marysa Dowling to explore issues around race and identity inspired by the recent Whitechapel exhibition Back to Black – Art, Cinema and the Racial Imaginary, which ran from 7 June to 4 September 2005.
For Mine the group produced a series of digital photographic compositions that have been enlarged to fit the alcoves in Aldgate East Station. These images express their feelings about identity and highlight issues concerning race and representation. With their hands painted with henna in the mehndi tradition, the young women have experimented with clothes and props including masks, wigs and veils in order to produce self-portraits that highlight their individual, personal expressions through fashion and disguise.
This project is part of Whitechapel Gallery’s education programme in partnership with Oxford House. Supported by the D’Oyly Carte Foundation, The Baring Foundation and The Lord Mayor’s Appeal.
Platform Portraits, the last collaboration between Platform for Art and the Whitechapel Gallery, was seen by an international media audience of approximately 150,000,000 people.
