Fit For Purpose

ALISTAIR PEEBLES reflects on the re-opening of the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness

I’VE READ somewhere that it takes about 48 hours to get to know a place well enough to feel you’ve found your bearings. Having been in and around the regenerating Pier Arts Centre for some months, to take photographs for the most part, I had begun to feel I’d got to know it again, following its two-year closure.

Then came the Opening, and it seemed immediately to have become new territory. I know many people that evening experienced a similar feeling, amongst others I’m sure.

It may not have been their first time inside the new building – refurbished and extended spectacularly, and comfortably within its £4.5 million budget – and they could probably remember very well the previous Pier – what’s now the “old part” of the gallery – but all were suddenly in a place that was full of people – and full of possibility. It was no longer an idea but a building in use. It was connected to the world.

And it was packed – about 600 invitations had been issued, each accompanied by a commemorative medallion, stamped with the new logo and engraved with the date, 6 July 2007. Many were the stories next day of friends missed – in the crowd, in the corridors, on the stairways and in the lift, in the many rooms and corners, and outside on the piers – though each had been looking for the other.

Thirty cases of champagne, several hours of dancing and a lock-in doubtless helped to carry us across rather dazedly into the new Pier world, but there was no question the next day that things had changed. “It was a magical evening and that sense of surprise lasted for several days,” remembers Isla Holloway, the gallery’s retail and marketing manager. “We all felt overwhelmed by the response we were getting.”

Neil Firth is a son of the town, and when he says the county has taken the collection to its heart, he knows whereof he speaks

A month later, the visitors are very plentiful, the comments enthusiastic. 12,000 people have passed through the doors to date (6,500 in the first week). They have admired the building – in itself and in its relationship to the town, the sea and the harbour – they’ve remarked on the quality of the light in the gallery, and some (we may find this more difficult to squeeze into the visitors’ book boxes, perhaps) have left favourable remarks about the works on show – the opening exhibition, A North Light: Cynosure, and about the permanent collection, with its more recent additions.

In the 1978 publication for the first Pier Opening, The Pier Gallery, the artist Patrick Heron wrote: “The collection … will certainly come to be regarded in the near future as one of the most distinguished and perfect of the smaller selections of twentieth century art on permanent display anywhere in the world.”

And, discussing the Orkney-St Ives connections, he commented that, “St Ives was one of the seminal centres of mainstream European art. The Pier Gallery collection has become one of that mainstream’s focal displays.”

That collection’s journey around Britain during the Pier’s period of closure, to Tate St Ives, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, Edinburgh’s Dean Gallery and Aberdeen City Art Gallery has brought it to a wider audience, obviously, but it’s been interesting to hear comments, from time to time, about how differently the works look in those different locations – generally to the effect that they seem much more at home in Stromness.

Their space in the Pier Gallery was designed in the 1970s by Kate Heron and Axel Burrough, and it has been left by the architects for the regeneration project, Reiach and Hall of Edinburgh, looking almost indistinguishable from the original.

I’ll get on later to the design and construction of the present building (and it is all one building now, all joined up – and the joins are as good and interesting as everything else about it), but first I’ll take the chance to emphasise how right Patrick Heron was, thirty years ago, and indeed how inspired and generous a collector was Margaret Gardiner.

Only six weeks ago, at the end of June, the announcement was made in Glasgow by the Minister for Culture, Linda Fabiani, that the Pier had been one of ten national museums successful in the first round of the Executive’s Recognition Scheme, a programme designed to “help to make sure that these important collections are identified, cared for, protected and promoted to a wider audience.”

Douglas Connell, Chair of the Recognition Committee, said, “To achieve Recognition status, the applicants had to demonstrate the uniqueness, authenticity, comprehensiveness, and national value of their collection. This first round announcement highlights the wonderful diversity of Scotland’s collections and we are confident the scheme is recognising the best the country has to offer.”

Neil Firth, Director of the Pier Arts Centre commented in response, “The Pier Arts Centre is thrilled to receive this national recognition… Our small collection of Modern art is a gem that Orkney has taken to its heart since the museum opened… It is perfectly at home in its island setting – something that Margaret Gardiner, the founder of the gallery and donor of the collection, knew intuitively would work.

“As an independent museum this recognition will help us reach out to new audiences and to promote the benefits of engagement with our artistic heritage. The award of this new status for our collection will also strengthen our case in approaching public sources of funding and demonstrate the social and economic importance of significant cultural assets that are held outwith Scotland’s main centres of population.”

As the terms of the award observe, the Pier’s collection has grown steadily since 1978. The original collection, given in trust to Orkney by Margaret Gardiner, contained 67 works. It now numbers 116, grouped around the central idea of Modernism, spanning the period from 1929 to the present day. “Most recently, work by internationally acclaimed contemporary artists, including Sean Scully and Olafur Eliasson, has been acquired, adding new depth to the historic core of the collection.”

Neil Firth is a son of the town, and when he says the county has taken the collection to its heart, he knows whereof he speaks. In that connection, it was very interesting to observe at public meetings held in early spring this year in Stromness, about its future needs as regards civic regeneration, how readily the example of the Pier Arts Centre – the building, primarily, of course, but that’s only there because the collection lies at its heart – was referred to as an model of architectural vision and as a seedbed for economic growth.

It will be interesting to see how differently the town looks in thirty years, though if the Pier development is taken as an example, and bearing in mind the imaginative doggedness that seems to be part of the spirit of Orkney’s “second” town, it will be no less interesting to see at the same time how similar it is.

For that’s what you get in the new Pier Arts Centre. It manages, in an exemplary manner, to be both the same and quite different. I can remember a comment that Exhibitions Officer Andrew Parkinson reported the architects as having made a couple of years ago, that following the work, the gallery should look essentially as though it had only been given “a lick of paint”. Clearly they understood the importance of what was there already, and felt the need to preserve it as strongly as the corresponding need to make it new.

There were various factors that had to be taken into account – the location above all, in every sense – visual, geographical, historical, cultural, architectural; the domestic quality of the original collection and its purpose-built rooms; the need for improved access to all areas of the building; contemporary requirements regarding environmental control and security; better office space for an increased complement of staff, including an education service led by Carol Dunbar, with trainee Amy Todman, and retail sales and marketing; and the growing importance of Orkney and this venue in particular as a focus for art – its creation and appreciation.

In his assessment in The Architects’ Journal of 5th July, Jonathan Woolf welcomes the building, paying careful attention to its many expressive and technical features. Better informed than most of us – of course – about its particular qualities and its relationship to the work of other architects, it’s gratifying to find that his views in general are consistent with the way most people have responded to the new place, inside and out. With immediate surprise, that is, with delight and fondness. And pride: “It’s right fine that it’s through here in Stromness.”

What Woolf says about the interior balance between the new pier gallery (it is literally on a newly-built pier) and the old pier gallery – their different character and ambience – is instructive and thought-provoking. On the one hand, we have a domestic-feeling space that subtly evokes the context in which Margaret Gardiner collected the work in the first place, and on the other, a space much more neutral and doubtless better suited to the art of today – as for example the large pieces here by Olafur Eliasson, Ragna Robertsdottir and Alison Watt.

Again on the one hand – or to turn Woolf’s metaphor of the stubby-fingered hand that is the waterfront of Stromness – on the one pier, we have a stone building that has variously been a recruiting station for the Hudson’s Bay Company and a coal shed, and on the other we have a building part glass, part black zinc that takes its aesthetic as much from the sheds and gables of the town as from the work of such artists as Robertsdottir and Roger Ackling.

Finally, while the new environmental controls that were an essential part of the impulse towards the whole redevelopment benefit both buildings – as well as the street premises – they are undeniably more obvious in the new than in the old. If you’re looking for them, that is. And if you are looking for them, then their presence might strike you a little awkwardly. However, it’s the kind of thing one can easily get used to.

I was writing these few paragraphs in a very special room, one I could easily get used to – the research room that has been created in the loft space of the new building. With fitted shelves filled with the extensive Pier collection of books, pamphlets and catalogues, this new library forms a perfect research tool for anyone with an interest in the collection, and it’s certain to be a great asset in the development of the Pier and Orkney’s potential as a location for academic study.

The old library, now named The Brenda M Robertson Room in honour of a Trustee of long standing, and a great supporter of the Gallery, has been lovingly restored to its original state, though the rest of the former house gallery interior has changed considerably. More about the street part of the premises will follow later.

So as I say I was sitting there, reading about the Pier and writing and I thought I should wander around again. What a pleasure, to check out the subject matter. Go downstairs – would the Robertsdottir lava piece still have that surprise – the almost total black that opens as you move to a white reversal of a clear Icelandic sky? Why, yes. Does Camilla Løw’s 4+4 still delight you in juxtaposition with its bobbing harbour counterpart, the Merlin III? Indeed it does.

And the soundtrack to Margaret Tait’s film, Jock MacFadyen, The Stripes in the Tartan, has it leapt from its place in the ambient Scotch groove? Not a bit of it – still dancing with those marvellous flickering figures. Around you – Eliasson’s watchful spectrum, Garry Fabian Miller’s ecliptic light drawings, Ackling’s boards of light drawn into lines of darkness; and there, and there: Sean Scully, Alan Johnston, Douglas Gordon and over the end of the corridor I Love Real Life.

There isn’t space here for a review of the whole exhibition, and I’m only mentioning these works because I’m on my way, as it were, to cross from the new gallery’s first floor to the first floor of the old part. And I’m walking I now realise through the space that I watched Neil describe one afternoon at Christmas 2004, as he faced the wall of the upstairs Pier Gallery and spread his arms to show where the aperture would at length occur.

I was going to have looked back to see what someone had mentioned to me the other day, the beautiful connecting distance between this old part and that new. I was going to have described it, but in the near distance, through a couple of those longer-established apertures in the Heron/Burroughs interior, I caught sight of Senan Kellaher, and went to speak to him instead.

Now, I’m glad I ran into Senan, because his part in this story and in the success of the whole project is fundamental, and demands to be recorded. Indeed it was mentioned, with the parts played by many other people, by Bob Shaw, Chairman of the Board of Trustees, at the Opening.

But I have Bob’s notes: they’re not easy to read, and if that’s the only record we have, we’re in trouble. So I’m going to take this chance to summarise them and briefly describe an intense, fruitful and to a large extent adventitious period in the history of construction in Orkney.

But it’s going to take a day or two – so this has to be the end of Part One. In the meantime, we’re out on the old pier on 6 July with a crowd of Pier supporters. Champagne corks are bursting in the shop-area behind us, and the air is filled with hubbub, magic and light. Bob Shaw and Neil Firth are standing side-by-side on the low wall of the little garden, about to start their speeches.

How informal, how very relaxed and optional it seems – we can hardly hear them. We move closer if we want to – behind us the corks are still exploding, the hubs are still bubbing, the magic growing momently – and soon we’re launched, and flowing together towards a new Pier, and we’re doing it in exactly the unfussy, cheerful manner we’d have been steered towards by the founding and continuing spirit of the place, Margaret Gardiner…

To be continued ….

© Alistair Peebles, 2007

Links

• Pier Arts Centre