Transparency is a two-person exhibition from Glasgow-based artists Alberta Whittle and Hardeep Pandhal curated by Mother Tongue, spanning print, artist moving image, drawing and installation. It responds to the architectural heritage of the Castlemills site – as a former silk factory, premises of the North British Rubber Company, and brewery – now occupied by Edinburgh Printmakers. The exhibition takes as its point of departure the physical layers of the print-making process; the buildings’ history; and considers the local built environment as a present-day testimony to Scotland’s colonial past. The exhibition’s title invokes the multiple definitions and etymological roots of the word ‘transparency,’ simultaneously i) meaning to shine a light through, ii) make easily detectable, and iii) to be open to public scrutiny, whilst transparency film is used in many printmaking methods as a means to transfer the image. Working with these three meanings in hand, the exhibition reflects upon on our current political environment, language, trade, travel, contact zones, and calls into question Scotland’s amnesia towards its colonial past. At the same time, their explorations push-back against aspects of transparency: via defacement, through otherworldly and digital simulations, and in the use of appropriated imagery.

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