The Loft Gallery, St Margaret’s Hope, Orkney, until 2 May 2006

Patch by John Glenday. (© Alistair Peebles)

IT HAS BEEN said “that once a poem is really there, the poet is dismissed, is no longer privy.” I’ve held onto this line for many years, and still believe it to be true. The question of “there” surfaced again as I viewed the latest exhibition by Alistair Peebles and John Glenday at the Loft Gallery in St Margaret’s Hope.

Theirs is a collaboration of sorts, each having a decisive and differing response to the other’s ideas and work. Much like road-mending, the twenty-six works on show comprise a work in progress, a diversion. So along this road, this beautiful road, we travel with them and follow their path until we find some thing, some one, some where. Then? We begin anew.

The initial step for both photographer and writer was their discussion about a photograph of Alistair’s of an overgrown tennis court in Cromarty, printed here to include the words: SLOW WET TAR. Now, a close-up of a weed-choked tennis court is a faintly ridiculous sight, until one notices below the tangle of giant and persistent growth, a path broken part-way through: an act of adventure, a claim.

This image with added text reminds me of a movie clip, credits about to fade. Only they don’t. They’re stuck still – no flickering screen. A sign forms on the memory thereafter – one of geological scale, layers of process at our feet. It’s where we are today.

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Overall this work in progress is serious but never high-minded, well-intentioned but never heavy-handed

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Within these instantly-taken images there are other long drawn-out processes to notice. Old and new roads (No 7, No 25); paths walked and mended, travelled in isolation and in imaginative time (No 21, No 6); above is Heaven, below the Earth at our feet (No 11, No 18).

All these suggest steps towards an act of making sense of the world, and in making the ordinary extraordinary for a moment. It is the wonder of everyday things, separating the wheat from the chaff.

You may infer that I dislike the Stoics. That phrase from Horace, “Admire nothing”, which suggests there is nothing worthy of wonder, or nothing new under the sun, is a dead-end. It takes for granted a conditioning, an exposure to repeated histories which in turn drive out any sense of “first” experiences.

Well, when one talks of art, there is often somebody who does not really listen. But wait, and hear that some art can still be full of wonder.

The weird and wonderful names of the pesticides that blot the PATCH of wild plants and attempt – though never quite succeed – to kill all. (One prays that Nature is as strong as the power of language: for if not, what of us then?)

One text work in particular (No 16) allows the viewer to breathe, to take in words and run with an idea. But in most of Glenday’s deliberately formal page layouts, the text takes on a leaden density, and the language almost solidifies to substance.

This has the effect of inhibiting reading, although at the same time these patches of text are gently broken by word-spatter, of biblical origin or reference in some cases, but mostly of common names for weeds, and these appear in red, popping up through the dense lines of black like the weeds they are, needing to be picked out.

If there is bleakness suggested here, there is also a lightness of touch in many of the works: the delicate foot-fall of marks made on a snowy lane (No 8), or a path through the Botanic Garden (No 14) where at that magical time, dawn, anonymous feet have split the dew, or indeed that sense of scampering possibility in THE TWO DOGS (No 16 mentioned above).

In writing this review, I found at first that I had a beginning and an ending but no middle. This was until I remembered the paired photographs REAL LOVE and ROAD REPAIR. These struck me as the most important works, holding the others together.

For it is in the gap between here and there that love lies, and that small pure distance reminded me that a heart once broken can be mended. For sure, the mend may now be starkly exposed, not as strong, but the connection made from one to the other has been renewed, so that it is possible to go on. For one must go on.

With only twenty-six works on show, what we know in part excites us into wanting to know in full. Overall this work in progress is serious but never high-minded, well-intentioned but never heavy-handed. If the road is as wide as it is long then these two friends, of considerable talent, will travel well.

ROAD WORKS is a closely observed and timely comment for all sorts of reasons. It is an exhibition about the landscape we inhabit and map out, about thinking and noticing the signs, and about love and beyond. Big themes!

Once again the Loft Gallery should take credit for exhibiting such provocative work.

© Colin Johnstone, 2006