YESNABY, ORKNEY 22-28 April 2007

White Handkerchief exhibition - work by Rik Hammond

A territorial army of artists have ambushed the WWII Ministry of Defence buildings at Yesnaby, a sharp, brittle and beautiful edge of Orkney. Lying between two sites of prehistoric defences at Borwick and Bigging, thoughts of territory run through the show, each artist housed in their own brick buildings. ‘White Handkerchief’ is the title of the collective encampment, a name the artists have taken from the Canadian landmass due west from the site. Maybe it is also a statement of peace or perhaps hints at the many goodbyes waved when Scots left for Canadian shores.

Flag waving features in the work of Clare Gee who puts forward an alternative solution to the recent emblem problem of the Orkney flag. Rejecting bright heraldic colours, Gee suggests a more responsive, subtle palate of heathery purples, stoney pinks and peaty, sheepy browns. Literally weaving Orkney into the fabric, felting North Ronaldsay fleece, the artist shows a muted pride in her elected home. While stating a resistance to flag waving, and denying any allegiances, the artist makes a strong claim to a heartland even crossing the heart in the jumper pieces. In a time when the King of Arms does not recognise the universally recognised St Magnus Cross, Gee’s ‘Unofficial / Inappropriate’ adds texture and warmth.

Sheena Graham-George goes on the attack and defence all at the same time.  Using the seascape framed in the window, the artist offers the view as a changing landscape, defending its rugged beauty against the dogmatic principles framed by English theorist and clergyman William Gilpin in his 1768 text on the picturesque. Conceding that nature makes for good colours and textures, Gilpin asserts that the artist must step in to create the perfect composition, possibly with the addition of a well placed tree or two. Graham-George steps back and laying down brush and paints, takes on the role of artist as dissenter. Outside the look-out tower on a Scottish Natural Heritage information panel there is a WWII photograph showing earlier defenders of the same landscape, using guns

Rik Hammond’s work brings an unlikely coupling of the words ‘bomb’ and ‘Om’, symbolic of the universe in both creation and destruction. Using a quote from Hindu scripture, itself within a quote from the American physicist Oppenheimer, as a starting point for his investigation, Hammond begins to thread elements together. Oppenheimer, head of the Manhattan Project which developed the first nuclear weapons, finds that in the silent moment when the bomb was created that the words from the Bhagavad-Gita come to mind, ‘Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds’. Hammond’s space is dusted in a post atomic powder and the disembodied voice of Oppenheimer crackles with audio gathered from the building itself. Joss sticks introduce a peaceful influence and the word Om emerges from his meditative drawings. Around the walls faces of Team Manhattan stare out obscured by dark scratched circles. Perhaps incredulous that some of the greatest minds of the time, including Einstein, should be put to such devastating use, Hammond’s angry etchings allow them some disguise.

John Shapter creates a more domesticated space, a dark, brooding parlour with black draped window and miniature black furniture. The curtains wrap and slap in the strong wind and bring the outside in. Waves crash in metal and inks and a dark sea bird casts a shadow overhead. The room has a feel of being abandoned, like an island croft still with crockery and bedding. A text piece makes sense of the unease ‘Storm clouds are gathering and I keep going to the door to look for you’. Shapter himself has embraced an abandonment wanting the work to soak up the ‘sounds and smells and damp spray from the cliffs’, leaving the sea air to imprint itself. When I return to the show two days after its opening the wind has carried off one of the works and made raggy crow wings of the curtains. Shapter is pleased with the intervention and even wants to continue his collaboration with the wind and sea beyond the end of the show to see what else might evolve and bear witness to the North Atlantic air.

On a Sunday afternoon a hundred or so people came to see who had taken up residence in the brick buildings on the edge of the island. Some curious walkers there to take in Yesnaby perhaps took home a different view of where art is to be found and enjoyed some new terrain.

© Rebecca Marr
April 2007