The Gordon Highlanders Museum, Aberdeen, 16-17 February 2007

Trevor Price, 'A Moment of Calm Among the Chaos'.

FLAIR is the first contemporary art event to take place at St Luke’s, former residence of 19th century artist Sir George Reid, PRSA, and now home to the Gordon Highlanders Museum.

With its beautiful Arts & Crafts architecture and modern extension, the museum was the perfect venue for this two day event celebrating the work of some of Scotland’s best artists and exploring the art of printmaking.

It is a significant development for the Museum, which runs a variety of creative workshops and encourages access for the wider community of all ages. Conceived as “a unique opportunity to purchase high quality affordable art in a historic setting”, the event also included two printmaking workshops for children and teenagers led by Cromarty artist John McNaught.

The Inverness based Castle Gallery curated the exhibition, and Director Denise Collins gave an illustrated talk on ‘Contemporary Art inspired by the Landscape and Culture of the Highlands’ on the opening Friday evening.

‘Flair’ is an example of the important work private galleries do to promote the Highlands and Islands as a creative centre, something that has been missing from the official Highland 2007 programme.

Denise discussed cultural motifs and symbols we take for granted and market to the world as Scottish; bagpipes, tartan, whisky, the clan system, which have their origin in the Highlands and have ironically been legislated against in the past.

Introduced in Gaelic, her discussion of work by Blandine Anderson, Michael Ross, Jonathan Shearer, Tom Mabon, John Nicolson, Arie Vardi, Shazia Mahmood and Dorothy Stirling revealed the way in which landscape and culture in the Highlands inspires a range of techniques and creative responses to our unique environment.

“You don’t have to live in the Highlands to be inspired by it” is a great message to communicate to audiences beyond the region.

Another important aspect of the talk was an introduction to the art of printmaking through discussion of screen printing, relief and intaglio in the work of artists Evelyn Pottie, Angie Lewin and Karolina Larusdottir.

Examining these techniques successfully debunked some of the myths about the art form, promoting an understanding of the integrity of handmade prints and the labour intensive process of creating them.

The difference between handmade original prints and the relatively recent phenomena of the Giclee (inkjet) print (which commercially has adopted some of the conventions of handmade editions through the artist’s signature and numbering) is an important distinction, especially for first time collectors.

Whilst some artists do use Giclee as part of their process the distinction lies with the “artist’s intent” and how an image is conceived.

Highlights of the show were recent additions and developments among the Castle Gallery’s regular exhibiting artists. Etchings such as Bronwen Sleigh’s ‘Petrolia’ (ed1) bear her trademarks of skilled composition and accidental marks that give the work a beauty and delicacy that reinterprets her industrial subject matter.

The actual etching process brings a human hand to bear on a world of machinery. For me, Sleigh’s work reads like a kind of industrial archaeology.

Trevor Price’s intaglio techniques have evolved to include work such as ‘Moment of Calm’ (ed 29), defined by a rich decoratively etched surface binding the two entwined figures together. ‘Constellations’ (ed 16) humorously maps out the relationship between two lovers dangling from a branch against a darkly ground sky. Price’s work always makes me smile. It has a characteristic playfulness and wilful abandon that is positively refreshing in the sometimes dour world of art.

A great discovery is the work of Joseph Davie, a former student of Glasgow School of Art during the 80’s, when testosterone and figurative painting seemed to go hand in hand. What is so different about Davie is the subtlety and ambiguity in a work like ‘Resting Place’ (oil on canvas) not only for its palette but the treatment of the figure which could be either dead or asleep.

A delicate camouflage ground of blues, greens and browns, the uprooted trees, which could also read as worms, creates a stillness which is deeply unnerving. Instead of immediate shock value the image gently creeps up on you. It is edgy, dreamlike and compelling in its organic softness.

A smaller watercolour, ‘The Quiet Evangelical’, is lyrical and enigmatic, the figure formed from the small fallen leaves that litter the ground. Carrying a cross with a light bulb the material which defines him is again painted as camouflage, with the military and overtly masculine associations diminished.

There is something very natural and human about his procession, again a result of the chosen palette and the way the figure is reduced in scale. It isn’t often that I return to watercolours but this small figurative piece had exactly that effect. Satisfyingly, it raised more questions than it answered.

‘Flair’ sets a great precedent for Highlands and Islands inspired work to find a wider audience and for contemporary works of art to be seen in an unusual setting. I hope that organisations such as the Gordon Highlanders Museum will continue to explore and develop St Luke’s artistic heritage through engagement with contemporary art and craft, and current Curator Sarah Malone is to be congratulated for her vision.

There is great potential throughout our region for partnerships between Visual Arts and Heritage to be developed and it is encouraging to see these links being actively pursued by the Gordon Highlanders Museum in Aberdeen and the Castle Gallery Inverness.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Gordon Highlanders Museum
• Castle Gallery