Armadale Castle & Gardens, Sleat, Isle of Skye, until 31 August 2007

Fishrock by Donald Mackenzie.

PART OF this year’s Fèis an Eilean / Skye Festival, this outdoor exhibition showcases the work of 11 local artists, including Julie Brook, Kim Bramley, Liondsaidh Chaimbeul, Steve Hall, Carol Kempt, Peter McDermott, Donald Mackenzie, Gary Mahon, Emma Siedle Collins, Patricia Shone and Maggie Zefara.

Artists have approached the lack of public gallery space creatively, interpreting aspects of the natural environment and enhancing our experience of the whole area. Each artist has created a site specific work creating a trail within the grounds of Armadale Castle.

The setting overlooking the Sound of Sleat is a superb environment for installation and sculptural work and I hope that temporary and permanent works by local artists will become a central part of experiencing this unique part of Skye in the future.

It is great to see the experimental work of several local artists who have taken the opportunity to expand the range of their practice. Emma Siedle Collins has created a large untitled sculpture which utilises found objects and remnants of human activity. The textured surfaces of rust, wood, ceramic and rope combine almost figuratively in what the artist describes as “layers of decay” that are displayed as part of a “living environment” in the gardens.

As part of this event the artist appears to have broadened the range and scale of her practice and it would be wonderful to see the sculptural element of her work develop further on an even larger scale that the viewer could walk around completely.

Stepping outside his familiar discipline of painting, Gary Mahon has created a series of three fragile earth works under the shelter of a monumental tree. Contrasting light and dark earth discs and mounds are in marked contrast to his painted landscapes.

Here the artist has embraced the opportunity to experiment, playfully exploring creative process; “For this project I wanted to have fun, I wanted to step back from Gary the Painter. I wanted to create for the sheer joy of creating, as a child does in a child like process. I wanted a strong visual piece that would work on many levels”.

Another artist Peter McDermott has chosen to create an installation based on the conditions more often expressed in his watercolour paintings capturing the shifting light and weather. Set in a wildflower meadow and with gauze like panels suspended from an enormous tree “Light Showers” recreates the sheets of rain that can descend in an instant over much of Skye. The material rippling in the breeze has a mesmerising and ghost-like quality that makes the viewer ever conscious of the slightest change in the atmosphere.

For artists living in an area dominated by the idea of traditional landscape painting this piece reveals the value of reinterpretation of that landscape to invigorate individual practice and reveal something of the full scope and potential of the artist’s work. The opportunity for the public to meet artists and ask questions about conceptual, challenging or experimental work is also an important aspect of the programme, especially for a first event.

To me this whole approach of pushing the boundaries of expectation is very much in keeping with the fluid relationship between art and craft disciplines characteristic of work in the Highlands and Islands.

That includes the reassessment of the visual in Highland and Islands culture in the “Window to the West” project, a joint venture between nearby Sabhal Mòr Ostaig and the Visual Research centre at the University of Dundee [Georgina interviews the project’s director, Murdo Macdonald, next month in Northings – ed.] and the creation of Fas – the Centre for the Creative and Cultural Industries at the Gaelic College as part of its next phase of development.

To see artists exploring new territory whilst being clearly inspired and challenged by the natural environment, history and traditions around them creates a multilayered experience for the viewer. This has enormous potential in terms of developing a creative hub representative of the full spectrum of artistic activity on the Sleat peninsula.

Although this activity is already taking place in the practice of individual artists it is not always publicly on display. The further development of visual arts as part of the Skye Festival is therefore an important addition to the overall programme and equal to traditional music, performing arts and literature.

Two artists that consistently push the boundaries in their practice are ceramic artist Patricia Shone and conceptual / land artist Julie Brook. “Sister Star- Heroine” by Patricia Shone is a work of beautifully simple organic form in a natural setting.

Three large bulb or bud like vessels are displayed on natural plinth stumps. The ashen textured outer surface combined with soft pink echoes the colour of nearby blossoms and seems to reflect the shifting pattern of cloud that is part of the atmosphere on Skye. Both conceptually and in terms of execution Shone’s large scale ceramic work represents a wonderful evocation of place and presence.

Julie Brook has produced a fascinating work sunk into the lawn in front of the castle ruins that explores shifting light. “Inversion 2 (To know how light falls and fills)” consists of a series of yellow metal boxes measuring 7×7, contained in the horizontal plane of the ground but having a “vertical presence”.

The ways in which light and shadow fill each element of the work throughout the course of the day create movement and ambiguity in terms of scale. The piece almost feels like an organism in spite of its geometric arrangement and can also be lit by night with boxes illuminated from underneath the horizontal plane – “flames flicker and glow giving an overall sense of movement to the piece as it hovers above ground”.

Kim Bramley has produced two beautiful fused glass panels set into the gothic tracery of the castle’s ruined entrance. “Threshold” rewards inspection from inside and outside the structure with exquisitely rich blues, greens and accents of purple, yellow and metallic phosphorescence. They are satisfying abstract pieces on their own but situated here on either side of the doorway enhance appreciation of the remaining architectural structure with unexpected colour and light.

Set among an eerily quiet grove of trees “Lord of the Isles” by Steve Hall is a large scale sculpture of a Viking ship surrounded by the smell of wet earth and vegetation, reclaimed materials in a setting being reclaimed by nature. The burnt edges and scattered artefacts on deck are particularly evocative as is the silhouette of the prow seen through the trees with the sea lying just beyond.

Less successful is Liondsaidh Chaimbeul’s “Seòbhrach as a’ Chlaich – Primrose from the Stone” a clumsily assembled symbolic piece attempting to evoke the poetry of Donald MacAuley. In this particular piece the sculpting of stone does not equal the poetic language that inspired it.

In a focus year of Highland Culture these eleven artists are to be congratulated for collectively exposing the range of work being created in this unique environment and creating challenging site specific works which are sometimes outside the individual artist’s comfort zone.

As hosts of the exhibition the Armadale Castle & Gardens and Clan Donald Centre have shown a willingness to engage with contemporary practice that is lacking in many heritage sites throughout Scotland. This exhibition enhances appreciation and reinterpretation of the heritage and natural environment of the area and I sincerely hope that it will become an annual event on the Fèisan Eilein calendar.

© Georgina Coburn, 2007

Links

• Fèis an Eilean
• Armadale Castle
• Work by Maggie Zefara, Emma Siedle-Collins and Patricia Shone at Fosgailte/Exposed