Commissioned by the National Maritime Museum, Feeling Blue (2023) is a tapestry by Alberta Whittle in collaboration with Dovecot Studios Edinburgh. It is woven by master weaver Naomi Robertson, and Elaine Wilson and set on powder coated steel gates made by Glasgow Sculpture Studios. It prominently features the phrase 'feeling blue' against a backdrop of blues and greens, incorporating coloured ropes that symbolise hope and oppression, with decorative coral highlighting climate crisis issues, and pearls representing wealth and power in maritime portraits.
The tapestry is displayed in the presence chamber of the historical Queen's House, Greenwich and reflects the significance of the colour blue in both the site’s 17th-century décor and association with the maritime world. Alberta Whittle’s practice concerns the legacies of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and its connections to present day institutional racism, white supremacy, and the climate emergency. As an artist, curator, and researcher, Whittle is motivated by the desire to manifest self-compassion and collective care as key methods of battling anti-Blackness. She often draws from archival materials and found footage in her work, which are frequently produced in collaboration with a network of artists, choreographers, and performers, whom she terms her accomplices.
Oscillating between film, photography, sculpture, textile, and painting, Whittle frequently explores the theme of water as a nebulous carrier of stories and forgotten histories. It also acts as an intervention, bringing to attention the accumulated grief of empire. It is placed in opposition to the portraits of two sixteenth-century paintings: The Armada Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I and Marcus Gheeraerts’s portrait of Sir Francis Drake – figures directly responsible for the engine of colonialism.
