MATT BAKER and SUSAN CHRISTIE update Northings on the final phase of the Inverness Old Town Art (IOTA) project

THE STORY SO FAR

IOTA has been developing since 2006, when the late Evi Westmore, then the Public Art Development Officer, appointed Matt Baker as Lead Artist, with support from the Scottish Arts Council. Baker proposed to use the Old Town Project to gain greater visibility for the diverse cultural community of the Highland region, enabling them to play a significant role in the emerging identity of Inverness as an important regional capital city.

The first major public manifestation was the temporary artwork Imagining the Centre in September 2006. A group of fourteen Highland artists (including musicians, a playwright, graffiti artists, new media artists, sculptors, painters and a historian) created a series of installations along Church Street.

Subsequent activity has focused on the generation of a distinct cultural ‘destination’ within the city centre. That activity includes a series of artwork commissions for the old town area in and around Church Street.

Three Virtues by Night (photo - Ewen Weatherspoon)

Permanent public artworks include Matt Baker’s Three Virtues, the series of Streetexts carved on stones, the newly installed drains and carvings in Baron Taylor Street, a collaborative project on a weather theme by DUFI (Fin Macrae and Al McInnes) with pupils from Culdeen Primary, and David Trujillo-Farley’s Riverstone Bench (made by Caithness-based craftsman Sam Barlow) outside Abertarff House. They are supported by temporary installations and events aimed at sustaining dialogue with local people and securing a legacy of experimentation and innovation.

The project has been led by a team comprising Matt Baker (Lead Artist), Susan Christie (Project Coordinator) and Marie Mackintosh (Inverness City Partnership Officer), aided an abetted by a wider group of organisers and participating artists. As both Baker and Christie insisted, this has been very much a collaborative effort.

SUSAN CHRISTIE: Yes, very much so. Inverness Old Town Art is very much a team initiative, with lots of different people involved, and with Matt Baker as leader. We were anxious to ensure that a whole range of voices were represented in the process, and that it didn’t come down to just one person driving the process.

NORTHINGS: Matt, what is your role as lead artist?

MATT BAKER: I have my fingers in the whole thing all the time. The way that we have run it is that it is a three-headed beast with myself, Susan and Marie, and the roles don’t break down that easily. Marie is moving back to HIE now, and we are racking our brains trying to work out how we separate the strands and who does what.

Abertarff Bench

I’m involved in creating project briefs, selecting artists, project managers, editors and other workers on the project, and as I see it one of the key things is maintaining a creative climate where creativity and innovation can land on fertile ground.It is impossible to define that very succinctly, but it comes down to keeping the channels open and keeping the karma of the project right, if I can use that analogy. It is an enabling function, but with the creative brief to the fore, and working with the artists is central to it.

NORTHINGS: The Three Virtues in Church Street has been the most visible and permanent result so far – were you happy with the way it turned out?

MB: I am delighted with how it’s settling in to the space, and people’s reactions to it. I think it did what I wanted, although I tend to set the bar impossibly high, and there are always things that you would do differently, but given the inevitable compromises that you have to make in that kind of public environment, I think it came out very well, and held on to the germ of the concept. There was a bit of initial controversy, but that settled down and never really took on legs, which was good.

In my practice I try to do things differently for differently spaces, and that piece grew genuinely from research into the place and working in Inverness, and that very much shaped it. I didn’t really impose a personal aesthetic on the situation, and I am pleased with that aspect of it.

N: Susan, how significant was the Imagining The Centre event in all of this?

SC: I pretty much got involved at that point, but from the start the project had laid great stress on getting people involved in a dialogue on the reshaping of the old town. Imagining the Centre was the first outcome of that, and the whole idea was really to get people involved and having a bit of fun. The whole energy from that day was really surprising and very positive for us. It just felt as though the moment was right, and people seemed very receptive to the idea that Inverness was changing and that it was being thought about in a very positive way.

It was an incredibly useful way of engaging people and trying things out in some of the public spaces before we did anything more permanent. People did get involved, which was the whole point. We tried to do the same kind of thing with The Three Virtues in that we tried to get people to tell us what they felt about the project and how it should be done, and we did that in a whole variety of ways. Not only did we want to canvas opinion on what the three virtues to be represented should be, but also what language they should be in [the verdicts were perseverance, open-heartedness and insight, and English, Gaelic and Old Norse – Ed.].

Drain Cover, Baron Taylor Street, by Ballantine's Foundry (photo - Fin Macrae)

N: Matt, are you involved in making any further permanent works as an artist for this project?

MB: No, not directly. I do see the lead artist role as part of my artistic practice, but not in terms of making another work. I actually struggle to make a second work in the same place.

N: Okay, let’s look at the main developments coming up in the next phase, including plans to move a little out of the old town to the Crown Street Wall.

SC: That is an interesting one, although I would have to say it is probably a ripple project rather than a core one. The blank wall was to be re-clad with stone, which would have been okay, but we saw a chance to do something a little more imaginative. It was a part of the overall project that the SAC weren’t so keen on, and haven’t supported, so we have had to work within the spend that would been made anyway.

We have put out a call for ideas, and we have had a huge reaction from all kinds of people, from members of the community to practicing artists and also various organisations, and not only in Scotland. We have around 70 suggestions, and are looking at that now with a view to making a decision by the end of November.

N: And the Victorian Market Project is also ongoing for the final phase?

Tea Party, Victorian Market, November 2008

SC: The major idea there is to design three new entrances for the Market, and also do some work in the interior. Gordon Robin Brown, a Nairn-based artist, is involved in that, and we also have a group of three artists, Nicola Atkinson, Karen Vaughan and Hanna Tuulikki, who work together under the name BW Cart, working on that project. The reception has been great from the traders – they can see the vision for it and the benefits from it.

We are aware that there are visual issues around the Market, and the artists are in dialogue with the traders about how to move forward on it. It is very individual at the moment, and we don’t want to lose that, so they are not looking at at standardising it all, but rather at some way of harmonising it a bit more.

MB: Yes, and also of letting it be appreciated for what it is. Its eclecticism is part of its charm, and we don’t want to impose a corporate look on it. :

N: And that brings us to the other big project that IOTA is undertaking, the façade of the Ramada Hotel.

SC: Ramada have a refurbishment plan in place, and the plan is to integrate artwork within that refurbishment, both in Church Street and on the Riverside façade. We put out a call internationally back in February-March, and had a phenomenal response, which was very exciting. We got that down to about twelve contenders, then interviewed them over a couple of days, and selected a final short list of three – Hsiao-Chi Tsai & Kimiya Yoshikawa, Alex Frost and Usman Haque.

Streettext (photo - Fin Macrae)

They have all come back to us with detailed proposals, and we are in the process of liaising with various people, including the senior management of the Ramada group. We left it pretty open for the artists to come up with their own ideas rather than being prescriptive. We feel that this is a project that will have a huge impact on the look and feel of the area.

MB: We briefed the steering group and the hotel on the short-listed proposals in November, and we hope to announce a decision very shortly. We had hoped that both this project and the Victorian Market might happen in the Spring, but realistically the Ramada may be Autumn.

I think if we can pull it off as we visualise it, it will be another huge feather in Inverness’s cap as a major player on the international cultural stage. That reputation is growing bit by bit, not just through IOTA but through a number of initiatives, and we feel that this one is a significant element. It’s not going to be The Angel of the North, perhaps, but it will be very significant. It will be amazing if we can pull it off, so watch this space …

© Kenny Mathieson, 2008

Links

• City Partnership
• IOTA Blog