Wild ting: why a chattel house now sits on a manicured Scottish lawn

Two years in the making, and drawing on themes of healing, the slave trade and even Vikings, the latest show by Alberta Whittle, who represented Scotland at Venice, has taken over a grand mansion on a holiday isle

On the sweeping manicured grounds of Mount Stuart, a neo-gothic stately home on the Scottish Isle of Bute, sits a most incongruous sight: a bright yellow and green Caribbean chattel house. It’s the creation of Barbadian-Scottish artist Alberta Whittle, who had originally planned to build a bothy to welcome visitors, recognising that the imposing mansion could pose a barrier.

However, the structure ended up becoming an amalgam of a bothy and chattel house, reflecting her dual heritage. “Bothies are gathering spaces of shelter in the Scottish landscape, but I wanted to imbue it with another island’s history of making spaces,” says Glasgow-based Whittle, who represented Scotland at the 2022 Venice Biennale. “The chattel house is an architecture derived from fugitivity – so if you were seen as a troublemaker and the plantation owner wanted you to flee, you could disassemble your home quickly.”