Da Gadderie, Shetland Museum & Archives, Lerwick, until 2 September 2007

Gunnie Moberg's exhibition in Da Gadderie.

SHETLAND is not one island; it is a group of around one hundred islands and skerries. Likewise Orkney is made up of about seventy. But before I lived in the most northerly of the two island groups, Shetland, they merged into one wild rocky outcrop in my imagination.

I am not alone. Not so long ago I saw a photograph in a national newspaper of Shetland’s world famous Up-Helly-Aa festival. Jolly good, except it was illustrating an article about Orkney. Well, it’s all kind of the same up there, isn’t it?

Confusion between the island groups is perhaps born from their geographical location (infamously separated by a box but adjacent to one another on TV weather maps) and shared Nordic histories. Travel another 200 or so miles up and over a bit and you reach the Faroe Islands – yet another rocky North Atlantic archipelago.

Gunnie Moberg’s exhibition seeks to fine-focus our eyes on the unique aspects of these distinct places. The exhibition features photographs drawn from over twenty years work by the Orkney-based artist. It is on show in the large exhibition space at the new Shetland Museum and Archives in Lerwick, which aims to show a range of local, national and international art and cultural exhibitions. This is the third since the building opened in June.

Moberg’s images range from the illustrative to the abstract, and include landscapes, portraits and aerial photographs. It may be hard to untangle them unless you are familiar with a particular landmass, building, tradition or face. It is upon closer inspection and with the aid of descriptive titles that you start to see the qualities that Moberg has identified as unique to a given place.

The exhibition has toured the Faroe Islands, Denmark, is now in Shetland, and will end its tour in Orkney. It will appeal to inter-island curiosity. Take, for example, the photograph of a seashell covered building Honeysuckle Cottage, Hamnavoe, Shetland. As Moberg expains “They liked this one in Faroe because they don’t have shells there.”

Titles serve an interpretative function. Propeller blade from the OCEANIC, wrecked off Shetland in 1914, Shetland is an image familiar to Shetland audiences but may be a curiosity to others. The title hints at the story behind the photograph.

Shetland Museum & Archives attracts visitors from many lands. These wildly scenic islands with their unusual, changing light have been a favourite of photographers for years. They are part of the public imagination. What is personal is the photographer’s selection of a particular shot through the lens and the choice of which images are displayed.

Moberg’s photographs are simple and balanced. Line, texture and composition dominate. They do not agitate or ask awkward questions. In Alternative Energy, Orkney, a wind turbine propeller blade slices through an iridescent sky. It creates a bold composition and linear contrast with the pale moon seen behind the turbine.

Likewise landscape is pared back to the fundamental building blocks of art. In !??, road on Streymoy, Faroe, a road covered in strange marks of uncertain origin (hence the title) becomes a black and white study of tone and line.

Agriculture, too, is described in terms of the shapes and patterns it creates, but also as timeless representations of tradition and culture. This can be seen in photographs such as Curing Sheepskins, Aith, Shetland or Taking in some hay, Gjógv, Faroe.

However, even amongst some of the most balanced composition and archetypal subject matter an underlying tension can be found. This arises from a disorientating use of perspective that stems from Moberg’s long interest in aerial photography

“From the air it is all two dimensional. You do not need to worry about the sky, distance, foreground, it is all dead flat. The only thing to play with is the light. Winter lighting shows up patterns in the land.” According to Moberg.

She explains that from the ground there is more to think about and even when on the ground she often takes photographs from above, if only a matter of a few feet up. These start to look like her aerial photographs “I didn’t want clutter. I wanted something simple and started going back to my aerial photographs.”

Thus perspective is skewed and it is often unclear from which point of view we are looking at the subject matter. In images such as Triplets, Orkney, a ewe and her three lambs are presented at an angle that makes it hard to discern where Moberg was when she took the photograph. It makes for a more unusual take on familiar subject matter.

Moberg was commissioned to produce a series of photographs for the new Scottish Parliament. Several of these are on show in this exhibition. In North Ronaldsay Lighthouse, Orkney the shadow of the otherwise unseen lighthouse cuts across the land. Sheep run across the shadow.

She was by the lighthouse where a film crew she knew happened to be filming and had access to the top of the building. She climbed up. “I just opened the door and saw the picture. I saw the sheep and only had a few seconds. It would be boring without the sheep. Something just happened.”

Moberg is also known for her illustrative photographs made during collaborative projects with writers. She has worked on several books about the three islands, such as The Shetland Story and The Faroe Isles with Liv Kjorsvik Schei and studies of Orkney with poet the late George MacKay Brown. Many of the photographs on show in this exhibition were originally taken to illustrate text.

“When you work with an author you have particular shots that you have to take but I try to add something creative” Moberg explains.

With Mackay Brown however the process was turned on its head. Moberg had shown the writer some photographs of Orkney in the hope he would supply some poetic captions. It was only when she spoke to the woman who typed for Mackay Brown that she learnt he had, in fact, written a series of poems inspired by what he had seen through Moberg’s eyes.

Moberg is also drawn to other artists as subject matter. The exhibition includes portraits of poets, writers and artists from the three islands. These include MacKay Brown, Shetland’s Christine De Luca and Faroese writer, William Heinesen. Intriguingly she hints at the existence of a large collection of portraits of well-kent writers built up over many years during Orkney’s annual St. Magnus Festival.

Of course all three island groups exist on many and complex levels, and not all are beautiful. But Moberg does not show us these. Ugliness, be it aesthetic or social, are absent. Subject matter has been pared down to its simplest and most beautiful form.

The differences we are asked to consider are differences in tradition, agriculture, architecture, culture. Variations in landscape, shape, pattern and texture. Even difficult subject matter falls under the spell of aesthetics.

This becomes apparent in two photographs of the Grindadráp (the pilot whale kill in Faroe) The kill happens only occasionally and Moberg explains that, unlike the whales, she was lucky to have been at the right place at the right time. She found the subject matter difficult.

However, the camera can form a protective barrier between photographer and subject and in turn audience and photograph. Yet it is not impervious. In Grindadráp, Fámjin, Faroe a beautiful, vivid red dominates the image. This is gallons of whale blood seeping into the sea. What is a familiar and traditional image in Faroe is one that may repel viewers in other places.

Moberg has unashamedly not embraced the digital age and delights in basic equipment. “My best photographs were taken on a 35mm Olympus with a 28mm lens. I am not technical,” she explains. She spends hours seeking timeless images. She returns to subjects again and again in order to show them to us at their most beautiful.

What we are being asked to consider is a personal view, a love affair with these three places. While some aspects of the islands’ cultures and topographies do have similarities, the longer you look at Orkney, Shetland and Faroe through Moberg’s eyes the more unique qualities you find.

Maybe the difference is sinking into the public imagination too. Not only do Orkney and Shetland now have their correct locations on several television channels but even Faroe can sometimes be spotted in the far left corner of the weather map covering our most northerly regions.

© Karen Emslie, 2007

Links

• Shetland Museum & Archives