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Blood event January 2007

	A visit to Whitechapel to see Margaret Salmon’s exhibition and a rare chance to visit Whitechapel library before construction begins. Thursday 1 Febraury 2007, 6.30 - 8.30pm

© Margaret Salmon, 'Ninna Nanna', 2006, 16mm film on DVD

Image courtesy Whitechapel

Whitechapel hosted an evening exclusively for Blood members. The event included a visit to the exhibition by the American filmmaker Margaret Salmon (winner of the MaxMara Art Prize for Women) and a talk by Andrea Tarsia (Head of Exhibitions).  In addition there was an opportunity to have a tour of the Whitechapel Library, the central building in the Whitechapel’s major expansion project, by Stephen Escritt (Head of Strategic Development).  The construction phase of the project will begin in Spring 2007, so this was a rare chance for Blood members to see the Whitechapel Library in its ‘raw’ state before the building begins.

The exhibition at Whitechapel premieres a triptych of three films collectively titled Ninna Nanna (2006), which was researched, shot and edited during Salmon’s six-month residency in Italy, resulting from Salmon winning the Maxmara Art Prize for Women, in association with the Whitechapel. Shot in 16mm black and white and colour film, Ninna Nanna depicts the experience of three Italian mothers in different stages of early motherhood, filmed in their domestic surroundings and set to a soundtrack of a traditional Italian lullaby (a ‘ninna nanna’).  Each of the films celebrates a tenacity and grace in the everyday activities of Salmon’s three subjects, while acknowledging the contradictions between the iconography of motherhood and the reality of child rearing.

The exhibition also includes two major recent works. PS (2002) is a filmed sequence of a middle aged man working in a garden, walking through landscape and occasionally caught smoking against a night sky lit up by fireworks.  Looped several times, the images are accompanied by a pre-recorded conversation between a man and a woman - a tense argument that loops like the images, capturing their relationship as it falls apart.  Peggy (2003) follows an elderly woman as she goes about her daily tasks with the steady, quiet song of Amazing Grace tenderly playing throughout. Her wavering and occasionally rasping voice provides a poignant counterbalance to images that evoke frailty, loneliness and an enduring strength.

In April this year, Salmon was awarded the first MaxMara Art Prize for Women, in association with the Whitechapel. The prize was created to help nurture and promote emerging female artists based in the UK, and to enable their development by providing the opportunity to produce new works of art through a six months residency in Italy.

 6:30pm, Thursday 1 February, Whitechapel 80 - 82 Whitechapel High Street
 London, E1 7QX. www.whitechapel.org

 Nearest tube station:
Aldgate East (follow signs for the correct exit on platform walls).