The fact that Peter Doig— this year’s designated Whitechapel Art Icon—was born in Edinburgh and that last night’s (25 January) gala dinner held to celebrate him at the Whitechapel Gallery coincided with Burns Night, made it inevitable that the evening should have a heavily Scottish theme. And it certainly did.
A lone piper and drams of malt whisky ushered in the illustrious stream of Whitechapel and Doig supporters, who included the artists Enrico David, Phoebe Unwin, Langlands & Bell and Idris Khan as well as such luminaries as Nicholas Serota, the National Portraits Gallery’s Nicholas Cullinan, the architect David Adjaye, and the designers Jasper Conran and Ron Arad.
Then it was the turn of the Whitechapel trustee Alice Rawsthorn to kick off the evening with her rendition of the Robert Burns poem Ode to a Haggis which, despite Ms Rawsthorn’s insistence that she was “a bit Scottish” and her promise to deliver the bard’s great work in her best Scottish lilt, was nonetheless delivered with her customarily perfect BBC English diction.
More Scottishness was to be found in the menu of haggis, neaps and tatties, and roast venison as well as, in what was for many the high point of the evening, an exquisite performance by two stunning male dancers especially choreographed by Doig’s friend, the Scottish dancer Michael Clark who was also present.
For his part Doig, who was accompanied by his daughters Simone and Celeste, was fulsome in his praise for the Whitechapel Gallery with which he has had a close association ever since being selected to show in the Whitechapel’s London Open exhibition back in 1991, remembering that “as an artist at that time it was your dream to be included”.
Then a spirited auction of artist-donated works ensued, during which there was a touching moment as Idris Khan proudly filmed the bidding on Stack Six, Studio Purple, a sculpture of vividly painted concrete-and-plaster stacked balls made by his wife Annie Morris. The work surpassed its estimate and helped to raise an overall £211,050 for the Whitechapel’s Education and Community programmes. Highland Flings all round!