Timespan, Helmsdale, July 2007

Timespan Artists Residencies

AT A RECENT symposium entitled ‘Outreach/Reachout’ in Timespan a number of speakers discussed the highly successful series of artists’ residencies hosted by the organisation since 2005. The artists were Julian Meredith, Jonathan Macleod, Nigel Mullan, Gemma Petrie, Beatriz Pimenta Velloso, Catriona Murray and Janis Mackay.

Each of the artists was required to work within communities in and around Helmsdale and to produce a body of work which was then exhibited. Some of the work was of a permanent nature, such as Julian Meredith’s fabricated steel whale which is sited at Helmsdale harbour.

Other work was more transient such as Gemma Petrie’s ‘fabulous beasties’ made with children from schools in Melvich, Tongue, Altnaharra and Farr. All of the work of these artists was exhibited in the Timespan Gallery and participants at the symposium were therefore given ample opportunity to experience some of the artistic end-products at first hand.

In a talk titled ‘Making Visual Art Visible’, Georgina Coburn, Northing’s Visual Arts Correspondent and author of the HI~Arts commissioned report ‘Five Challenges’, put forward a number of important points regarding the problems and opportunities which visual artists face in the Highlands and Islands.

‘Five Challenges’ (which was published in 2006 and is available online at www.hi-arts.co.uk/visualarts ), was based on a large number of face-to-face interviews with arts practitioners and workers in the area. The report formed the basis for a three year development plan for HI~Arts which has yet to be released pending appropriate funding.

Georgina discussed the five challenges in the eponymous report: communication, professional practice, infrastructure, education and vision. All of these relate to the central difficulty of making visual art visible within Highland communities.

Georgina pointed out the timing of her report was apt given the number of artist-led groups and networks in the region – although these networks (such as Visual Arts Sutherland [VASu]) are strong and committed, the infrastructure which would allow them to link up and communicate with each other has not yet been formally established.

Currently there is a combined climate of threat and opportunity to future development and existing provision of the arts. Georgina discussed The Draft Culture (Scotland) Bill (yet to be published) and the imminent dissolution of The Scottish Arts Council and its replacement by a new quango, Creative Scotland.

She commented: “the draft bill failed to recognise primary providers of cultural entitlement such as arts and heritage centres, the voluntary sector and artists’ groups and studio trails…and identified local authorities as primary providers of access to art and culture…”

Such fears as well placed given the fact that the new Highland wards have resulted in even larger administrative areas and the remit of posts which were at one time dedicated to arts development have been extended to encompass leisure, sport and heritage, stretching already thin resources even further.

Inevitably, it seems, the knock-on effects for the visual arts will be even less funding and general dissolution of already meagre resources. All of this comes at a time when, in the much touted Highland 2007 year of culture, there is a distinct lack of visual art in the official programme.

However, despite such disappointing developments there are also many optimistic signs in the visual arts, among them the ‘Window to the West Project’ hosted jointly by Sabhal Mor Ostaig on Skye and The University of Dundee’s Visual Research Centre.

Georgina pointed out that residencies and the resulting contact by communities with working artists are of great importance: “contact with artists builds self-esteem, confidence, pride and identity not just for individuals taking part but potentially for the whole community…”

Such observations are of great validity and have proved to be especially true in the case of Timespan, which (under the Directorship of Rachel Skene), recognizing such fruitful and long-lasting outcomes, appointed Meg Telfer to co-ordinate the residencies.

Meg has commented elsewhere that “the main attraction of the residencies to artists was the location and the heritage connection. Some had visited the far north previously; some had read about it and explored web sites. All were fascinated by the remoteness, the unique landscape and history. A case in point was Nigel Mullan whose residency was based in Golspie and he has commented that “the residency was successful in…allowing me to reside within a community and to develop not only my own work but also projects that involved members of the community.”

One of Nigel’s works, ‘The Book of Golspie District’, demonstrates the artist’s interest in place-names: his large scale book-work reads like a topographical poem with Gaelic place names on one page and their Anglicised equivalents on the other.

Visual artist Catriona Murray and writer Janis Mackay, whose residency was in the Strath of Kildonan, collaborated on a project which involved as many local people as possible. Mackay produced a number of poems which are full of the spirit of the place, while Murray’s images also reflected a deep sense of living in the Strath during the winter months.

One of Mackay’s poems reads: “It was Imbolic, Candlemas, feast of Bridget and Bride./ The quick time when sap starts to rise./ By the Craggie burn we drank coffee./ The way the small river played,/ miles from road, ancient trees,/ this deed of walking, and maybe Saint Bride/conspired to shape a place and time so perfect/we witnessed the earth’s faith/ that this, this and this/keeps on returning.”

It’s difficult to place a true value on such sentiments and indeed on the importance such artistic interventions can have on a landscape, a people and a community. The fact that art serves a purpose well beyond ‘entertainment’, ‘leisure’, ‘culture’, ‘heritage’ and all the other terminology so favoured by bureaucrats and institutions is beyond doubt.

Artistic presence in such communities is not new, however, as the words of poets Rob Donn and Ewan Robertson, ‘bard of the Clearances,’ so strongly testify. It can only be hoped that the ‘suits’ in Inverness and elsewhere who make funding decisions which facilitate such work will realise that art is a vital element of human existence and assumes an even greater importance in the economically fragile and culturally undernourished areas where these residencies took place.

The persistence, optimism and vision of those who allowed such work to be done (co-ordinators, hosts, gallery workers, the artists themselves, et al) is to be warmly applauded.

(Timespan Gallery has a rolling programme of current exhibiitons until October)

© Giles Sutherland, 2007

Links

• Timespan Gallery