As well as being well known in her native Scotland, Kirsty Whiten has exhibited internationally and been involved with numerous projects over the last 10 years. Her distinctive warped drawings and paintings have earned a year's residency in Paris, numerous awards and bursaries and been exhibited as far a field as Cologne, Den Haag, Austria and Melbourne. Whiten initially gained notice for her large-scale portrait paintings and highly detailed photorealistic drawings, but her work has diversified in recent years to include sculpture and photography. Her monkey relics and other twisted drawings have appeared in magazines and on blogs around the world, including Juxtapoz, Hi Fructose and Empty.

Artist statement on her  Monkey Relic Series:

There is a certain zeal in the way that humans set themselves apart from the rest of nature. To me there is just a continuation, we are animal, we have drives and instincts that always flow just under the surface of civilization. I am really interested in this line between human and beast; language, culture, and tool-making were all once held up as examples of what makes us unique, and have all been shown to exist in other animals.

Death to me is a state of non-being. All of the hopes and prayers lavished on these monkeys are the desire of the living to create meaning and continuation; just as with religion. I have none, and I am totally intrigued and touched by this need in people. My technique, the level of detail and time spent on rendering surfaces has always been a kind of reverence.

I think of these monkey relics as Darwinian saints and sacrifices, adorned with the futile beauty of trying to reach across the veil.