Birnam Institute, Dunkeld, 3-4 June 2006

Work from An Dealbh Mor project on Isle of Skye.

PVAF 2006 was a thoroughly inspirational event giving everyone who attended plenty of fuel for thought through a range of seminars, talks and discussions. Visiting artists from Spain, Lithuania, Germany and New Zealand joined local artists and arts organisations, viewing work through screenings and portfolio networking and addressing issues relating to professional development.

For artists based in rural Perthshire the opportunity to network beyond the central belt, meet with other artists, and exchange information and ideas is a model of development for our own visual art scene in the Highlands and Islands. Significantly, four keynote speakers from the region shared their work with a wider audience and helped promote discussion of the role of the visual arts in rural communities.

Based on Arran, textile artist Alison Bell spoke about location and its influence on her creative life and work. For her Arran is a state of mind, and the links between her mixed media textile works and inspiration drawn from the island’s natural environment were clearly visible during her presentation.

The influence of her home on Arran as a peaceful place of respite is at the centre of her creative practice although it has been necessary for the artist to leave many times to work elsewhere. The simplicity and perfection of water shaping sand and rock in one of the artist’ photographs, also permeates her treatment of the textile medium.

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Events such as the PVAF conference are a vital source of support, information, and a natural driving force in the region’s future visual arts development

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Alison utilises old and new technology to create her textile works which can contain combinations of digitally generated forms and images with hand painting using pigment dyes, Fimo modelling and stitching on a silk, satin or chiffon ground. The fluidity of these ground materials contribute to the curious and experimental nature of the work. She combines source material with different techniques to create a kind of digital collage.

Stitching isn’t used to hold things together but forms part of the surface’s formal composition. ‘Black Firework’, inspired by the city of Chicago (2006), is a large scale example of how the artist generates her ideas visually through use of colour and form. The energy, vibrancy and movement characterising the city are brought to life through an abstract composition which has an almost electrical pulse.

It is a good example of the stimulus of location. Whilst her island home remains at the core of her practice outside influence is also reflected in the artist’s fusion of different techniques generating a creative energy of its own. Her work is very much about achieving balance from all these visual elements. More recently she has been experimenting with sculptural forms in silk and expanding her work into 3D.

Julie Brook and Kath Macleods’ work on An Dealbh Mor a year long bilingual arts education project on Skye, involved all of the pupils at Sleat Primary School, their teachers and the wider community. It is a shining example of cultural legacy and the layers of value that an arts project can achieve.

Rather than an isolated education-based event, the sustained growth of the project, which was developed over two years, allowed a multi disciplined approach integrating visual arts with music and dance. Developing work with individual pupils and a sense of ownership through collective involvement and direct fundraising has had a profound effect not only on visual awareness, but improvement by students in other subjects and increased confidence.

The children themselves formed a committee to raise funds for the project which culminated in an exhibition and performance based on their drawings and paintings.

Explorations of the local landscape began outside in charcoal and were then translated into a large scale collaborative drawing. Interpretation through watercolour painting followed, with students producing work with amazing use of tonal values and layers of colour as they came to grips with the medium. The strength and immediacy of their charcoal drawings, experimentation in painting and focus given by the local landscape of the Cuillin found further expression in an enormous collaborative painting upon which a performance was based.

Composer Piers Hallawell and choreographer Claire Pencak took their inspiration from the landscape, the geological history of the island and directly from the children’s visual art work. Movement was developed directly from pupils original charcoal drawings and the music became an effective contemporary soundscape.

Most importantly, the whole process was documented on film, allowing those not involved with the project to see the benefits of visual arts involvement with education.

Every child in the school took part, with interaction between different age groups proving a great success. Younger students’ immediate and spontaneous approach to drawing assisted older students in developing unselfconscious freedom of expression, teachers also becoming involved more confidently with their pupil’s development. This can only add to the educational value of the whole school programme in the future.

The specific needs of artists and visual arts organisations working in this environment were addressed on day two in a series of talks followed by an open rural arts forum.

Claudia Zeiske, Director/ Founder of Deveron Arts and Curator of the “Artists at Glenfiddich” programme, gave an excellent and lively presentation on her experiences collaborating with international artists from her base in Huntly. The idea that without local exhibition space “the town is the venue” enabled Claudia to develop an innovative approach to staging exhibitions in the local newspaper and taking socially relevant issues further afield through the use of billboards in major cities.

The potential for creating locally inspired public art works in the absence of infrastructure is highlighted by Claudia’s work, inviting international artists to respond to the town of Huntly itself. The “empty shop” project by Danish Artist Eva Merz successfully dealt with the issue of rural decline by converting an empty shop building into a studio, then into a work of art and a series of commemorative merchandise.

Andy Mackinnon, Arts Programmer at Taigh Chearsabhagh in North Uist, discussed the centre’s role in the community, highlighting the importance of identifying what is unique in the environment in order to organically generate visual arts activity.

The reason that many of us chose to live in the Highlands and Islands is based upon our experience of the natural environment. Taigh Chearsabhagh’s aim to become a centre of excellence for environmentally based contemporary visual art is a natural and visionary response to location.

Similarly the centre’s Prime Time arts programme identified the island’s aging demographic and responded creatively to the needs of elderly and isolated residents in North and South Uist and Benbecula.

A programme of activities including painting, printmaking, willow weaving, leatherwork, music and movement also encouraged reminiscence through the use of artefacts. Heritage and the visual arts are inextricably linked with the lives and experiences of participants in the Prime Time programme and have enormous value in the community.

Issues relating to isolation, both geographically and in terms of creative practice, legitimising artistic practice outside central belt cultural and academic institutions, and communication and collaboration between artists living and working in rural areas were some of the topics discussed during the rural arts forum.

I think everyone present would agree that the value of direct communication through the conference and other future gatherings should be a foundation for artist led initiatives to raise awareness of the value of visual arts activity. Events such as the PVAF conference are a vital source of support, information, and a natural driving force in the region’s future visual arts development.

© Georgina Coburn, 2006