Land and Sea

Orkney’s Cultural

Landscape6 September-8 November 2014

Pier Arts Centre 28–30 Victoria Street

Stromness, KW16 3AA

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, Wreck, Warbeth, 1986 © The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust

The Orcadian poet George Mackay Brown offered the ‘essentials of life’ as the stimulus for Orkney’s rich and flourishing cultural achievement—the turning of the seasons and their effect on the land, the changing cycle of the day-to-day lives of the people from ancient times to the present.

More recently, this eagerness ‘of the mind and the imagination to respond to the turning of the tide’ has inspired local artists along with those from beyond Orkney’s shores to engage with its exceptional light, land and form.

Margaret Gardiner OBE (1904-2005), the

founder of the Pier Arts Centre, recognised this too—the unique relationship between people, land, sea and sky and its influence on artistic endeavour—when she gifted her collection of modernist artwork to the people of Orkney.

This exhibition draws on works from the Pier Arts Centre’s permanent collection to present a series of creative rooms that explore the artist’s relationship with the key elements of colour, light and nature and highlights the distinctiveness of Orkney as a place of inspiration and creative innovation.

Quotes: George Mackay Brown, Orkney and the Artist, The Pier Gallery The First Ten Years, 1988

‘a unique mingling and concord of the elements’

Sylvia Wishart, Bird on Window I c. 1980s © The Estate of Sylvia Wishart

Alan Davie, Symbols in a Landscape 1994 © The Estate of Alan DavieAlan Davie, Island Phantasy 1999 © The Estate of Alan Davie

Symbols in a LandscapeAlan Davie – Ancient & Modern

The paintings and prints of Alan Davie (1920-2014), who died aged 93 earlier this year, embrace a vast and eclectic range of symbols and imagery derived from his passion for ancient and contemporary cultures. His love of jazz music, scuba-diving and flying, his knowledge of African & Pacific art, and Zen Buddhism, all interweave in a spontaneous and intuitive manner to create images that draw on the magical and mythological as well as forms of his own invention.

The title and substance of Davie’s painting Symbols in a Landscape has provided the focus for an on-going, long term project that brings together the parallel disciplines of art and archaeology in a unique and inspiring way and builds on the considerable interest in both fields of study that exists locally and around the world.

For several years there has been a growing dialogue between the Archaeology Department (Orkney College UHI) and the Pier Arts Centre to develop ways in which the creative methods employed by artists can contribute to a deeper understanding of archaeological practice and vice versa. A regular flow of activity including an artist residency, seminars, exhibitions and workshops illuminates and interprets for a wider community.

Davie was born in Grangemouth, Scotland, and studied at Edinburgh College of Art 1937-40. He undertook a travelling scholarship to Italy in the late 1940s, where he was impressed by the work of Jackson Pollock and other American Abstract Expressionists in the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice. He was awarded a CBE in 1972 and was an Honorary Member of the Royal Scottish Academy.

Hoy in Mind Sylvia Wishart and Bet Low

The island of Hoy, Orkney’s second largest land mass, has been a draw for artists over many decades. Early map-makers and surveyors noted the unique topography of the island and the great 19th century artist William Daniell (1769-1825) made the first detailed artistic study of Hoy as part of his epic A Voyage Round Great Britain published between 1814-1825. In more recent times Hoy has sustained the interest of many more resident and visiting artists.

The Scottish artist Bet Low (1924-2007), who kept a cottage in Lyness in the 1970s and 80s, made many paintings and studies of the island. In the Hoy Hills, 1977, Red Rysa, circa 1970s and Calm Water (at Mill Bay Hoy), 1972, all on display in this gallery, apply the artist’s analytical and pared-down style to the distinctive contours and hues of the ‘high’ island.

A particular fascination with Rackwick Valley (Hoy’s secluded northern township) was brought into focus in the mid-20th century through the poetry and mythologies of the Orcadian writer George Mackay Brown (1921-1996). Later, the valley would become home and inspiration to the British composer Peter Maxwell Davies (b. 1934). During the 1960s and 70s the Orcadian artist and teacher Sylvia Wishart (1936-2008) produced a remarkable series of landscapes from her Rackwick base that explored the tensions between outward appearance and inner spirituality.

The works by Sylvia Wishart in this room come from a later period in the artist’s career—Hoy remains the central image but now framed from within Heatherybraes, the artist’s elevated mainland house and studio overlooking Gramesay , Hoy Sound and the Atlantic Ocean.

Bet Low, Calm Water (at Mill Bay, Hoy) 1972 © Bet Low’s Trust

Sylvia Wishart, Reflections 2004 © The Estate of Sylvia Wishart

Sylvia Wishart (1936-2008) was born and brought up amongst the piers and closes of Stromness. Though the artist’s primary focus would become the island of Hoy (firstly depicting the mysterious beauty of Rackwick Valley and later the elemental splendour of North Hoy and the Atlantic) her early work often finds the artist looking closer to home. In this room a painting of the Holms of Stromness from the early 1950s shows the artist setting out to describe her immediate environment in a distinctive and understated manner.

The rusting hull of the trawler Northolem, wrecked off the rocks at Stromness kirkyard in 1966, became a singular motif in Wishart’s work in the 1970s, spawning a series of poignant and subtle works. The remains of this same wreck also inspired the Scottish artist Wilhelmina Barns-Graham (1912-2004), who produced a number of Orkney works following an extended working visit to Stromness in the mid-1980s.

W Barns-Graham was one of the most innovative artists working in St Ives at the time that Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson were helping to establish the Cornish fishing village as an important centre for contemporary art. The connections and similarities between the maritime communities of Cornwall and Orkney were recognised by Margaret Gardiner, the founder of the Pier Arts Centre, and this link is underscored through Barns-Graham’s work not least in her drawing From the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness (Blue), 1984-5.

In the early 1970s, Sylvia Wishart set up a home and studio in the building that subsequently became the Pier Arts Centre. The artist’s close friendship with Margaret Gardiner became the spur that led a broader group of friends and supporters, including the artist and historian Bryce Wilson, folklorist and broadcaster Ernest Marwick, artist Edgar Gibson and Marjorie Linklater, to seek to fully capitalise on Gardiner’s extraordinary gift.

Haven for ArtWilhelmina Barns-Graham, Sylvia Wishart and Stromness

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, From the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness (Blue), 1984-6 © The Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Charitable Trust

Sylvia Wishart, (Untitled), c. 1980s © The Estate of Sylvia Wishart

Local and UniversalMargaret Tait’s Unique Vision of Orkney

Margaret Tait, Land Makar 1981 © Alex Pirie Margaret Tait, Land Makar 1981 © Alex Pirie

The poet and filmmaker Margaret Tait (1918-1999) was one of Scotland’s most original and innovative artists of the 20th century. She produced over 30 films and several books of poems and stories, over a career spanning more than four decades. Tait was a fiercely independent artist and all but two (The Drift Back, 1956 and Blue Black Permanent, her only feature film, completed in 1992) were produced with limited finance, many taking years to complete.

Tait described herself as a ‘film-poet’ and her work finds an intense beauty in the local and the everyday. Through the artist’s penetrating and inquisitive gaze the commonplace stuff of life takes on a universal meaning as seasons change and nature is observed.

Land Makar was filmed over a period of four years, recording the crofting life of Tait’s neighbour in West Aith, Sandwick, Mary Graham Sinclair. Like almost all of Tait’s films Land Makar was shot on a clockwork, hand held camera, giving the portrait a rich and intimate texture.

Margaret Tait’s work has inspired many younger artists and filmmakers and the annual Glasgow Film Festival/LUX Award and bi-annual Residency (both supported by the Pier Arts Centre) has assisted many exciting artists including Torsten Lauschmann, Anne-Marie Copespake and Rachel Maclean.

Land Makar, 1981, 32 minutes, colour, sound, 16mm transferred to DVD

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Sea/Land (with Herbert Rosenthal) 1967 Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 2014 © The Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay

Ian Hamilton Finlay, Catameringue (with Peter Grant) 1970 Presented by the Contemporary Art Society 2014 © The Estate of Ian Hamilton Finlay

Concrete ConnectionsIan Hamilton Finlay’s Orkney Muse

The recent gift from the Contemporary Art Society of five early prints by Ian Hamilton Finlay (1925-2006) are displayed alongside other poem prints from the Pier Arts Centre’s collection. The prints are pre-eminent examples of concrete poetry where the words and the space they occupy on the page reinforce one another.

Finlay spent time on Rousay in the late 1950s as a road worker. Living in Orkney had a profound effect on him and he described Rousay as his ‘birthplace’ as a poet. He felt inspired by the island, the characteristics of its landscape, its people and their way of life. It was here that he started writing short stories and poems and developing the interests that would eventually establish him

as one of Britain’s foremost concrete poets.

Since then he has become one of Scotland’s most highly regarded artists with an international reputation. He is known through his work as a poet, visual artist and philosopher and in more recent times as a gardener. His garden, Little Sparta, at Stoneypath in South Lanarkshire has been described by Sir Roy Strong as ‘the most important garden made in Britain since 1945’.

As part of its Millennium project The Constant Moment, the Pier Arts Centre commissioned a major sculpture, Gods of the Earth – Gods of the Sea from Ian Hamilton Finlay. The work was installed near Blossom Quarry on Rousay in 2004 with the artist making his first visit to Orkney in over 50 years.

The Pier Arts Centre is a registered Scottish Charity No SC014815

Tues–Sat 10.30am–5.00pm Admission Free

www.pierartscentre.com

Christmas Open, 22 November-24 December

Upcoming Exhibition

This year, the Pier Arts Centre Christmas Exhibition will preview on Friday November 22. A highlight of the Centre’s annual programme, the Christmas Exhibition showcases the volume and diversity of creative work being produced in Orkney. Artists and makers living in Orkney are invited to submit

up to two original artworks for inclusion in the exhibition on or before Tuesday November 4. The work must be submitted with a completed entry form which can be downloaded from the Pier Arts Centre website www.pierartscentre.com or collected from the gallery.