Kirsty Whiten has been working since 2000, exhibiting her distinctive drawings and paintings internationally. In collaboration with other artists and in street settings, Whiten has used paste-up techniques to enlarge her characters and work them into public murals.

She is known for her warped large-scale portrait paintings and highly detailed photo-realistic drawings, often containing powerfully subversive content and irreverent humour. Her work has been featured in magazines such as Juxtopoz and Hi-fructose, and art-blogs worldwide. Whiten’s work is about people; human behaviour, history, family, society, sexuality and culture.  Her take on her subjects is quirky and unsettling.

I built a house with my partner, Ben Seal, a couple of years ago. We moved out of Edinburgh and into a small village in Fife. We designed a passive house; that is one which requires little or no heating, and it has a sound studio for him and a painting studio for me. It’s by far the best studio I have ever had – in the past I was always in a semi-derelict building with mice and frost. I still can’t really believe it every time I walk in – I love it.  Because I got to design it from scratch, it has good north light and a skylight to the east for morning sun.

If I am painting I work at the easel and make a mess everywhere, other times I sit at a drawing board to work on paper and try to be precise. I have images and little bits of text all over the walls, and I find my brain makes good and odd connections out of these in it’s own time, when I am not concentrating too hard. I have to keep refreshing this pin-board to keep ideas flowing. I also have a few images of favourite artists around – Paula Rego, Charles Avery, Frida Kahlo, Dorethea Tanning – just to remind me where to aim I guess.

I bring people into the studio to photograph them and dress-up and play – it is essential to have this neutral, creative work space – everyone behaves differently in there, quieter, more focused and sort-of free.

I’m working on a set of rituals and rites just now – I have an exhibition in Austria in July and I have a lot of work to make – so I am collecting little fetish power objects and photographing and drawing different people in costume, dancing and freaking out.

From time to time I work outside because I can make my work public and monumental by enlarging the drawings into paste-ups. I really like the public aspect of it – it is the antithesis of the gallery where it all has to be clean and crisp and the feedback is very civilized. It is highly glamorous work, often balancing on commercial bins and chatting to various tramps and passersby in an alley like a wind tunnel.

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‘Where I Make’ invites readers behind the scenes of artists from many disciplines to share photographs and a little insight about where they create their masterpieces. See more from the series here.

Right now I’m sitting in a hotel in Thessaloniki, Greece. I’m here to speak to some design students and help them plan a wall painting project. Before arriving in Thessaloniki, I spent the day in Athens, doing research into the work on the streets there. I was fairly blown away with all the political imagery and also the amount of graffiti in the city. I guess because of the financial situation, certain areas are being cleaned less often, which has led to this build up. The reason I mention all this in relation to The Canals Project is that this type of trip is one of my favourite ways to find artists for future projects. I was doing the same thing in Sao Paulo, Brazil around five years ago, when I first came across the work of Zezao. I remember seeing a couple of his works in the downtown area and learning about his working process. How he paints in tunnels and sewage systems under the city and so on. It made me love the work even more. Eventually I managed to track Zezao down and interview him. At the time Zezao didn’t speak much English and I didn’t speak any Brazilian. So most of the interview was done with a translator. These days Zezao speaks English pretty well, however my Brazilian has not improved.

Zezao / The Canals Project

When I first heard about a street art project for the canals of East London, Zezao was the first artist I thought of. I knew he’d love the idea and his work, with its strong links to waterways would be the perfect fit. I usually find artists in these unusual ways. I’d done a small project with Scottish artist Mark Lyken a couple of years ago, and found him really good and easy to work with. So when I saw the collaboration he did with Teo Moneyless, from Italy, I thought it would be amazing to bring both of them to London. I’m really excited about the new work these two will do. One of the most interesting trends in graffiti and street art over the last few years has been artists playing around with abstraction in public spaces. Mark and Teo do this with an amazing amount of flair and just a bit of sci-fi geekishness. Another artist duo in the project is Interesni Kazki (Interesting Tales), from Ukraine. Their work is already has a fairly big international following, so I’m hoping their UK debut will be popular with audiences. I’m also happy to be bringing some Eastern European vibes to the project. The last official artist is Remed, who is probably the most established of the group. Remed’s approach to image making is fairly fluid, and his works typically mix text with figuration. I’ve known his work for a while and have always been a fan. I like the way it often mixes sort of Cubist styling with a contemporary spin. But with Remed, every work is always different, so we’ll have to see what he comes up with. I’m sure it’s going to be brilliant. Added to this we have unofficial artist, Ekta Ekta, from Sweden, who we’ve managed to squeeze in. Ekta is actually going to do a residency at the Gainsbourgh School in Hackney Wick and collaborate with the kids to make some new work. He’s done similar things in Gothenburg and the results have been amazing, so I’m sure he’ll do something equally awesome with the kids in Hackney Wick.

Mark Lyken / Teo Moneyless / The Canals Project

Another trend that has grown in the last few years is the growth of the citywide mural project. I’ve probably helped with the growth of this trend in some small way with my previous project on Tate Modern’s façade in 2008. For The Canals Project however, we are working with spaces that are not so huge in scale, but more intimate and within a fairly contained public area all along the canals path around Hackney Wick course. Added to this, we have to think about the fact that works of street art already exist in the areas we are working in. For me, it is interesting to try and integrate the commissioned pieces with the uncommissioned.

I’m already way over word count and I haven’t even mentioned the film events we’re doing with Hackney Picturehouse cinemas or our street art and politics research day at the White Building in June!

Interesni Kazki / The Canals Project

Street Art Film Festival
The Canals Project (Street Art for the Waterways) and Hackney Picturehouse have teamed up to present a mini-series of films which explore the past, present and future of street art and graffiti. Selected by curator Cedar Lewisohn who has picked films which have influenced the history of street art and graffiti or which comment on its future direction. A selection of short films will accompany the features. With thanks to Moniker Projects for helping with the selection of the short films.

4 May
Downtown 81
preceded by short films Dreams (Jo Peel) (with intro by the artist) & Chile Estyle (Pablo Aravena)

5 May
Wolfen
preceded by short film Your Eyes are Dead (Alexis Milne) with intro by Alexis Milne

11 May
They Live
preceded by short film Dots: Before Cameras

12 May
This Space Available
preceded by short film Open Air (Lou J Auguste) plus intro and Q&A with Lou Auguste

8 June
Seminar Day with Walking tour & discussion
The White Building, Hackney

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