Pier Arts Centre (2)

15 Feb 2008 in Orkney

An Endlessly Pleasing Whole

ALISTAIR PEEBLES completes his two-part celebration of the re-opened Piers Arts Centre in Stromness

SIX MONTHS later – and a whole year nearer the Pier’s thirtieth anniversary – it’s time at last for Part 2: a glance back again to the reopening of the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, and its first, meticulously curated exhibition, A North Light: Cynosure. As you’ll remember, we were all caught up in the mid-point of the event, a wondering, happy crowd on a balmy northern evening, poised together on the brink of departure, discovery, delight.

We were about to discover also, from Senan Kelleher, Casey Construction’s Project Manager, what the redevelopment process had meant to himself and to the firm. We were studying the notes of the opening speeches to find out what it all meant to the Pier’s Board, and the Director. We were gathering press releases and some reviews, and then suddenly it was Christmas…

In the meantime, there have been two major attractions at the gallery: A North Light, as I mentioned, and A Winter Festival, featuring more than 200 pieces of work by Orkney artists, which has just concluded. There have been satellite displays, including Consequences by Christil Trumpet, Ferry Loupers by postgraduate students at ECA, and a show of work by Rebecca Marr from her Art & Agriculture Residency.

There have been readings, conferences, lectures, tours, outreach activities, mentoring sessions and workshops. There has been much going on behind the scenes as well as in the public arena, and there have been awards: the Scottish Museums Council’s Recognition Scheme being one of the earliest to make an impression in the Pier’s new life.

Ingenuity, enthusiasm, determination and, not least, a high level of technical skill, were the qualities quite evident in all parties involved in the construction process

Doubtless we’ll hear of more in time to come, but in November another major prize came the Pier’s way, when the Royal Incorporation of Architects in Scotland Andrew Doolan Best Building in Scotland Award 2007 was presented to Reiach and Hall, the architects of the new Pier. At £25,000, it’s the biggest cash award in British Architecture. “The jury was particularly impressed with The Pier Arts Centre,” said Douglas Read, a jury member, “because of the seemingly effortless way in which the new gallery has been settled in beside its neighbours as an integral part of the townscape.”

What did they say at the time of the opening? They were right on track. Neil Gillespie, design director of Reiach and Hall, led the team. “The project for the Pier Arts Centre is one of those ‘once in a career’ buildings,” he said. “The site, client and collection are very special. Our intention from the start of the project was to attempt to realise a building that grounded itself in the town, creating a form that while being somehow familiar, also clearly expressed a contemporary ambition and confidence.”

Richard Calvocoressi: “The refurbished and enlarged Pier Arts Centre, filled with light and with views to the harbour and sea at every turn, promises to set a standard in the cultural life of Orkney that will be hard to rival – a worthy home for Margaret Gardiner’s collection and for the ambitious programme of acquisitions and exhibitions that will attract visitors not once but many times.”

Amanda Catto, Head of Visual Arts at the Scottish Arts Council: “The Scottish Arts Council’s vision is for Scotland to continue to be recognised as a centre of excellence in and for the visual arts, nationally and internationally. The development of the Pier Arts Centre will make a significant contribution to this vision, offering many more people the opportunity to engage with art of the highest quality and providing artists with a unique setting for the presentation of their work.”

Colin McLean, the Heritage Lottery Fund’s Manager for Scotland: “This project has cleverly combined the old with the new to create a dynamic and contemporary setting worthy of its fantastic collection of British art. It now has universal appeal, which is sure to make it popular with schoolchildren, families and visitors from overseas. The Heritage Lottery Fund congratulates the Pier Arts Centre on its transformation. Orkney can be justly proud of this impressive showcase for one of Scotland’s outstanding art collections.”

Neil Firth, Director of the Pier Arts Centre: “From the outside, the building is strikingly modern, but it sits comfortably in the midst of Stromness’ unique street and seafront buildings that appear to have grown almost organically. The real magic is when you step inside – the art and the harbour environment combine and complement each other to provide a charming effect.”

The sense of agreement in all these views is striking, and it’s been evident time and again over the summer as visitors I’ve met have described their reactions to the new building. One of the main comments is how effectively the exterior and the interior are made to play off against each other architecturally. This was also noted in Part 1. What became more clearly apparent over the months was how effectively the art is made to play off its architectural setting and its locale, and how much is gained from this. It’s a knack that the gallery staff have, of getting everything in exactly the right place, for the right reasons.

One of my favourite examples of the correspondences they were able to evoke by their use of layout and setting (I mentioned the Camilla Løw last time) was the juxtaposition of Callum Innes’s Exposed Painting, Deep Violet, Charcoal Black, seen side on, with the harbour basin beyond the window to its left. The side-lit striations of paint brought a sense of the water’s space indoors. The outside, in turn, was “exposed” by the painting: made deep violet, charcoal black. (This with the Merlin II, you remember, hitting on 4+4 upstairs in its curvilinear yellow and turquoise.)

Another more obvious but very important correspondence was created between the cardboard column-sculpture Stackwork by Lesley Foxcroft and the nearby concrete pillars. The Helmut Federle drawing in the same area of the gallery had been referenced in the architects’ rationale, just as Ackling and Robertsdottir upstairs had informed the structure of the building itself. Altogether the more you looked, the more the entire experience – of space and light, exterior and interior, structure and content – made, as it continues to make, an endlessly pleasing whole that’s at least as great as the sum of its parts.

The idea of correspondence operated at every level in the opening exhibition: in the relationship between past and present for example. The Naum Gabo sculpture in the Pier collection, Linear Construction No. 1, and Stadium (Concept V) by young Orcadian painter Steven MacIver; the painting by the late Ian MacInnes juxtaposed with works by Anne Bevan and Colin Johnstone; Sylvia Wishart’s lovely drawings that depict archetypes of the Orkney landscape, catching form, movement and rest in an unending airy dance; Lawrence Weiner’s texts and their own material counterpart, ageless beyond the glass; Christine Borland’s family tree in silver, agate and gravity.

The title, cynosure, is full of this kind of suggestion, implying that the gallery itself is star-like, while also referencing the many stars and skies it contains: in the work of Ian Hamilton Finlay, Colin Kirkpatrick, Rebecca Marr, Mary Newcomb, and inverted, simultaneously near and far, in Alison Watt’s Dark Light. And a north light: the gallery as a guide: a good, reliable, stable thing.

Some Swiss visitors I met were far more impressed with the new Pier Arts Centre than their own much-celebrated new galleries. Partly this was because of the matchless way the interior relates to the exterior, visually. How many galleries in the world can function in this way? In Scotland, Inverleith House comes to mind, but no others. The Pier has always worked thus: its many coigns and sightlines suit the character of the collection, the setting and the integrating genius of the place very well indeed.

Ingenuity, enthusiasm, determination and, not least, a high level of technical skill, were the qualities quite evident in all parties involved in the construction process. As well as the many thanks to individuals that were included in the opening speech made by Board of Trustees Chairman Bob Shaw last July, and as well as the observations made by Neil Firth on the opening exhibition, both made reference to the way in which everyone involved in the project had aligned themselves very productively together, making what Neil Firth described as a “constellation”.

Though he has since left the firm to take up a post in Glasgow, Senan Kelleher was project manager for Casey Construction for thirteen years, and this particular project was a real high point in his career. “Paddy Casey and I were delighted,” he remembered. “It was a landmark project in Stromness and to be at the forefront of that, from the construction point of view, was great. Then, trying to work out how to do it. A lot of the ingenuity was Paddy’s, of course, finding simple solutions to complex problems.”

Bob Shaw made reference in his speech to the elegance of the crane the company brought in to the pier area, and of course the infilling of the harbour basin. Many remember the “super trolley”, dreamed up by Paddy, for the efficient removal and transportation of Barbara Hepworth’s Curved Form (Treveglan), as the building project got underway in 2004. A simpler framework of bolts, wheels and angle iron could not have been imagined, around the priceless bronze and its Portland stone plinth.

“An understanding of the complexity,” Kelleher continues, “and a readiness to meet the challenge of making it a success were very apparent from the start, and shared by the whole design team. My over-riding memory was of the energy and effort that the whole team put into it. It was a thoroughly enjoyable experience: I’ve never been part of a project where that level of cooperation has persisted throughout the whole period.”

And as far as Orkney is concerned, he says that the project has established a benchmark in its own right, irrespective of the standards of existing architecture, that demonstrates the rich resource of talent that exists in Orkney today. At the end of the summer, Reiach and Hall returned in force, when a coach arrived bearing the whole office, on an outing to visit the gallery and celebrate its success. One architect I met on the stairs ran her hand down the wooden railing, and looked round at the panelling and concrete work adjacent. “The workmanship is incredible,” she said. “You’d be very lucky to get anything like this on a project on the mainland.”

The long term challenge, continued Kelleher, is to make architects aware of what’s possible here. “A tough act to follow,” as he says, but I’ll conclude with Bob Shaw’s words summing up his thoughts on the opening, and on what makes the pursuit of this kind of excellence here so worthwhile.

“George Mackay Brown, who loved the Pier, described Orkney as a place of order: a place of remembrance and a place of vision. Margaret Gardiner’s refurbished Pier Arts Centre…reflects exactly that description, as it sits here in GMB’s Stromness, rooted in the Orkney landscape and in Orkney’s heart. The architecture of the new pays honour to the style and accomplishment of the old, while making its own statement of vision for a long and rewarding future.”