Quarter Century Marked by Visionary Development
 

THE PIER ARTS CENTRE in Stromness is undergoing a major refurbishment. DAVID HARTLEY and ALISTAIR PEEBLES provide an update on the plans, and a look back at the gallery’s origins and history
 

WORK IS underway on an ambitious project to refurbish and extend the Pier Arts Centre – in the year the Pier celebrates its 25th anniversary. The aim of the £4.5 million initiative is to ensure that the Pier continues to develop and flourish as an arts centre of international importance for Orkney, Scotland, and the UK as a whole.

 The charm and character of the two historic buildings that currently house the Pier will be lovingly preserved, while a new extension will link the two into a single complex fully accessible to people of all levels of mobility, where the centre’s permanent collection can be provided with the highest level of care in a carefully controlled environment.

The extra space will allow the centre to create a new permanent display of the best of Orkney art and to make the most of its huge potential as a venue for education, entertainment and cultural enrichment.

Award winning architects Reiach and Hall beat off strong competition from a shortlist featuring six other leading practices to win the design brief. The Edinburgh-based company has come up with stunning proposals for the new building. It has been designed to be strikingly modern, yet complement the surrounding architecture – the stone houses and boat sheds that give Stromness its unique appeal.

Preliminary clearance work has taking place, with an old, structurally poor extension being demolished to make way for the new building. The demolition was managed in a way that created minimal disturbance, with stone from the extension carefully removed by hand, bagged and taken away from the site in a sea-going barge.

Neil Gillespie, Reiach and Hall’s design director, is now looking forward to work beginning on the new extension itself. “This is a project of huge significance internationally, as well as to Orkney and the rest of Scotland,” he said. “For us as architects it’s been a very special challenge indeed. Our aim was to come up with a design that was rooted in its location – we looked to Orkney itself for inspiration for the form of the building.
 
“We want this to be a building people feel comfortable with and enjoy visiting. It is designed to complement the collection – the huge amount of international interest this project is attracting should hopefully make even more people aware of the significance of these remarkable works of art.”

The Pier’s director, Neil Firth, said the success of the project depended on ensuring there are sufficient resources to run the centre in future. “Obviously the council is hard pressed at the moment,” he said. “But there are examples of how well organisations do when they are sufficiently resourced – look at the success of the St Magnus Festival – and over the years I think we have done remarkably well on the small amount received.”

 The centre currently employs three full- and one part-time staff, but following the expansion, it is hoped there will be seven full-time positions. “We open all year round, providing a challenging and entertaining mix of exhibitions and events for both Orcadians and visitors to enjoy, he said. “In future, our programme will be able to expand to include more outreach activities to the other islands. In particular, we will extend our work into all of Orkney’s schools in a way which supplements the work of teachers and helps bring artists and pupils together.

 “The vast majority of funds for the development are now in place, with more than £3 million coming to Orkney from the National Lottery along with a substantial grant award from the European Regional Development Fund. Early on in the process Orkney Islands Council laid a critical foundation stone by committing £500,000 to the project.” 

 Historic Scotland and the Pier Arts Centre Trust’s own fundraising have ensured that enough funds are in place to see the project begin. “We will of course be continuing our fundraising efforts to raise the relatively small amount that yet needs to be secured,” he added.

“The initial work of site clearance I am glad to say has progressed without any disruption to our neighbours or to the life of the town. Most of the work has taken place from the harbour side of the site and has prevented any snarl-up in access to the town’s main street.”

“The paintings and sculpture that form the Pier’s permanent collection are the envy of leading galleries in Britain and across the world.”

The Pier Arts Centre opened in July 1979 and with annual visitor numbers currently reaching 22,000, the gallery has consistently been in the top six visitor attractions in Orkney. It organises around 10 exhibitions per year of local, national and international art and craft, with an Open Exhibition each May and an annual Christmas Exhibition that showcases some of the best work from within Orkney. An exhibition of work from schools is held bi-annually as is a show of recent Orkney art graduates.

The paintings and sculpture that form the Pier’s permanent collection are the envy of leading galleries in Britain and across the world. The works – by artists who include Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Alfred Wallis – are regarded internationally as making up one of the most significant collections of 20th century British art to be found anywhere in the UK.

The PAC Collection lends work regularly to exhibitions across the world. Recently over 300,000 visitors have viewed more than 30 of the works during a special year-long exhibition at the Tate St Ives. Many of the works are now on show at the prestigious Kettle’s Yard Gallery in Cambridge, while four more are about to return from a major retrospective of the work of Ben Nicholson in Japan. Another four are set to travel to Spain soon, for that country’s first retrospective exhibition of the work of Barbara Hepworth, later this year.

There were 67 works in the original collection – a further 34 have since been acquired or donated – and many were by artists who found inspiration in St Ives, almost as far from Orkney as it is possible to get in Britain. The original collection was the gift of Margaret Gardiner OBE, who had known the artists personally, and who decided that Orkney was the perfect place to house their work.

Margaret, who recently celebrated her 100th birthday, had been a visitor to Orkney since the 1950s and has many friends in the islands. Among them is the painter Sylvia Wishart, who lived at the time in the building that was to become the Pier Arts Centre, but wanted to move out of the town and into the surrounding countryside. “She was such a live wire,” Sylvia remembers today. “She knew straight away that this was the ideal place for what would become the Pier Arts Centre – and there’s no doubt that her infectious enthusiasm made it happen.”

“The exhibition space will be on a scale to rival anything else of its kind in Scotland, and it will have been built and will continue to be run by people more than capable of meeting the challenges that presents.”

When the centre opened its doors 25 years ago, Bryce Wilson had recently been appointed as the county’s museums officer. “It was remarkable how much at home they looked at the Pier,” Bryce said. “These were works of international importance – the Tate would have loved to have had them and so would the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh.

“But the marvellous thing is that they came to Stromness instead. It was quite extraordinary seeing them in such a homely setting as the Pier. But, of course, that’s what Margaret wanted – she wanted people to feel that instead of a gallery, they’d been welcomed into someone’s home.”

Neil Firth added: “Margaret greatly valued her time in Orkney and the many friends she still has here. I believe her generosity stemmed largely from the warmth of welcome she received here and from the many kindred spirits she found in Orkney who shared her enthusiasm and commitment to the arts. Before the Pier, there were artists working away in isolation, but there was no real focus for the visual arts in Orkney. Her tremendous gift became a catalyst for a real blossoming of the visual arts in the islands.”

Today there are artists working across the county, many with workshops people can visit. Some have grown up here, some have returned after college and others have been drawn to live in a community with such a flourishing arts scene. Smaller galleries and exhibition spaces have emerged throughout the islands, encouraged by the demand the Pier has generated for access to the visual arts.

As a teenager who would later graduate from art school, Neil can remember having the opportunity to visit just one art exhibition in Orkney before the Pier came on the scene. “Now, by the time young people go off to art school, they’ll have had the chance to enjoy countless exhibitions featuring work by local artists and those with a national or international reputation.”

Construction work is due to begin early in 2005, with a completion date in mid-2006. Andrew Parkinson, Exhibitions Officer, knows as well as anyone that as it stands the Pier is well-nigh as good as it can be. It does need “a lick of paint” however, and he quoted with approval the architects’ hope that when all the work is over, that will be the overall effect created. A refreshingly modest aim for an architect, and a reassuring one. The exhibition space will be on a scale to rival anything else of its kind in Scotland, and it will have been built and will continue to be run by people more than capable of meeting the challenges that presents. And of taking the powerful legacy of Margaret Gardiner and the past 25 years well into the future.

Adapted from articles by David Hartley published recently in The Orcadian and Orkney Today, with additional material by Alistair Peebles

© David Hartley and Alistair Peebles, 2004

Related Link

• Pier Arts Centre website