Proposals for Text and Colour Designs for Windmill Turbines

Earlier in 2008, ALEC FINLAY presented a lecture in Stromness, exploring the aesthetics of wind turbines in the landscape. Alistair Peebles, of Porteous Brae Gallery, explains his reasons for organizing the event.

The local context for this lecture was a lively debate about the potential in Orkney for renewable energy developments, and especially about the place of wind turbines in the landscape. These structures have been familiar in some parts of the islands for decades, and expansion into other areas is a matter of widespread interest.

In January 2008, a public inquiry was held in Stromness, into the proposed construction of three turbines on Merranblo, a hill to the north of the town. Given all the circumstances, such a development could have substantial economic benefits.

One of the main sources of concern, however, was over the way in which this development could be understood in relation to the general characteristics of the landscape setting for the World Heritage Site. This site includes such monuments as the stone circles of Brodgar and Stenness, and Skara Brae to the north-west.

The lecture was not intended to argue for or against this or any other development, but to introduce a new perspective into the discussion. Thus Alec makes it clear at the outset that his intention is primarily to share some of the work he had been doing as artist in residence at NaREC (the New and Renewable Energy Centre in Blyth, Northumberland), “to see how it chimed with people here.”

However he does take the opportunity towards the end of the lecture, to speculate on the way in which his research could be applied in that particular local instance, referring to a text which he found in a biography of the Brazilian musician and singer Caetano Veloso: “In the west / to the west / of the west.”

More information about Alec’s work with NaREC, as well as further examples of the mesostics and circle poems to which he refers in the lecture, can be found on his website. The book he mentions, with photographs by Alexander Maris, will be published next year. It will be entitled Skying.

A few further points of information. In the room in which the lecture was held, at the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, was an exhibition of photographs by the late Gunnie Moberg; Alec refers to one of these in the course of his talk, as he does to Tam MacPhail, Gunnie’s husband, who owns and runs Stromness Books and Prints.

Where Alec begins the lecture is with a poem of his father’s, Ian Hamilton Finlay, who had two periods of residence in Orkney, first as an evacuee and later, in the 1950s, when he stayed in Rousay. The Chief Crop of Orkney is taken from his collection of Orkney lyrics, published in The Dancers Inherit the Party.

Thanks to the sponsors: Aquatera Ltd, HI~Arts, Orkney Islands Council, Orkney Today, A J B Scholes, Scotrenewables Ltd and James Wilson (Orkney) Ltd; and to Mark Jenkins for camera and editing.

The lecture was delivered to a full house at the Pier Arts Centre on June 12 2008.

Article © Alistair Peebles (Porteous Brae Gallery), 2008
Film © Alec Finlay, 2008