Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum
The Diamond (Descartes’ Daughter) by Emily Wardill was purchased for Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museum through the Contemporary Art Society’s Acquisitions Scheme for 2008-2009.
The collection curators at Aberdeen Art Gallery are gradually acquiring contemporary works to be shown with the important historic and modern collections. In 2008 the gallery purchased Torsten Lauschmann’s Girl with the Pearl. This purchase initiated a greater confidence in acquiring moving image works for the museum.
The Diamond (Descartes’ Daughter) by Emily Wardill, completed in 2008, has its starting point in the artist’s memory. She remembers a film that she thinks she may once have seen. A diamond is locked in a vault and is stolen by a group of expert thieves. In a search to find this remembered film she realises that it is a number of images and narratives that have merged in her memory. Wardill’s The Diamond (Descartes’ Daughter) is a rendition of the artist’s memory, the narrative is a woman’s voice with a heavy northern European accent – this is a work that resonates well with the other treasures in the collection.
With thanks to FORTESCUE AVENUE / Jonathan Viner, London.