Taigh Chearsabhagh, Lochmaddy, until 29 January 2009

Work by Allison Weightman

THIS IS a guy who never buys art because he’s got a house full of stuff from shows and swaps, but…. More than 10 years ago, I’d just completed the finishing details on a purpose-built studio, angled towards the Minch, and I bought two raku pots by Allison Weightman. Her work was known to me by the Scoraig connection – we may well have been at a demonstration together, but I definitely ended up lying in front of transit vans with her neighbour. As you do.

And when we chatted in the police van the subject of Allison’s pots came up. I remembered seeing them and feeling that they were partly a response to An Tealleach towering over Little Loch Broom and bleached bones, scoured rock and scudding hail. I imagined a ritual of driftwood drying in rotation and the moon being in the right quarter for the firing and the temperature being reached and the compulsive combination of craft and accident yielding these crackled glazes when the straw was lifted.

So when I saw the pots which seemed to fit that vision, also by that time filtered through the experience of attending renga workshops at the Ceilidh Place, courtesy of The Japan Festival, I bought a couple. And they are now installed in the kind of (sometimes) minimalist environment that’s my living room. And I never tire of living with them.

But when I met Allison doing a workshop as part of a pretty messy public art project linked to Ullapool High School rebuild, I felt the more transient experience of attending it stayed with me longer than most of the permanent works installed. I can say that this shaped my own approach to public art for a time to come.

The workshop intro went something like this: OK, Raku is usually done with driftwood and a ritual of building fires and turning them and all that but I find a decent blowtorch and this oil drum do the job pretty well.

And I took part in a similar workshop within the falling walls of a blackhouse on Tanera Mor as part of the Triangle Trust’s Three Islands project: OK, Green tea is usually thought of as the thing to drink while we’re at this stage of the glazing but I find a very moderate shot of Tequila works pretty well.

Just enough to free and relax the dipping and painting of the pre-moulded pots but not enough to add further danger to a process involving the aforementioned apparatus and significant temperatures. The pots as they emerged were exciting and quiet at the same time. After all these years there were still surprises in the colour and form of the decoration which emerged.

I thought of the composer David Graham’s description of asking a Cuban drummer if he ever tired of playing what was essentially the same beat, all his life. No, because I can always play it better, was the reply. I’m convinced this artist and her ease within this form could result in endlessly satisfying work for more than a lifetime. There’s no need to “move-on” or “develop”.

I don’t know when I first heard of her working practice of shooting at pots. I saw examples and did not know the process or the reasoning or purpose behind it. In De-struction Ceramics, which has just opened at Taigh Chearsabhagh, all this is clear.

The work of two artists is on show. Ehren Tool is a Gulf War veteran. He makes simple mugs and applies drawings which are a reminder of a recent history which is shocking. The drawings seem at first like decorations, like tribal scratchings on bone. But the scenes depicted on a practical domestic object are reminders of what this eye witness and participant has experienced. His practice is to continue to make these and give them away so they are not precious objects but the instruments of a mission.

All the Weightman ceramics in this exhibition have been shot when at the “leather” stage. That is when the drying clay has the characteristics of animal skin. The spray of shotgun pellets or the explosion from a high-velocity rifle disrupts the form which has been previously found. The new, marked piece is then fired so the history of the action is fixed.

Sometimes the process is applied to a harmonic shape, say a near-disc which seems a thing of beauty but abstract. Some of the most disturbing works are different. Weightman has taken clay castings from the torsos of some of her children and allowed them to dry to the skin-like stage. Then she’s shot the cast. Then fired it.

On the face of it this seems to have something in common with the “Sensation” exhibition where shock tactics were to the fore. It seems to me that this work is completely different. In the words of Yeats (who witnessed War and Civil War), “A terrible beauty is born.”

The really strange thing is that the work retains some of the quiet elegance which comes from years of craft. This makes it bearable. So you don’t switch off but look closely at the work produced by one mother. The cartridge or bullet is only part of the story. I don’t think this could have been achieved without a sense of compassion for all the other mothers.

I propose two possible comparisons. Some late works by Will Maclean have suggestions of barbs and suffering. Nothing new in his practice but the imagery has become more sustained so it’s like an anthropological archive. Again the work has accomplished craft behind it so it has some of the timeless quality of Innuit carvings. I’m thinking particularly of his Creative Scotland show at DCA which included the imagery of Jiggers – a whole tradition of making a specific fishing lure.

By contrast I propose a comparison with the work of Tracy Emin, seen in the recent retrospective at the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art. It turns out that Allison Weightman experienced being shot by an air rifle. What could have been a minor injury was infected and became serious.

So she witnessed the corruption of a part of her own body, caused by the impact of lead. But that personal experience is transformed into something different though true to the personal experience – the way a novelist or playwright can usefully distort the truth of an incident in a personal life.

Whereas it seems to me Emin’s work, derived from personal trauma, is all about walking as naked as possible in public. The expression is as raw as it needs to be, the form of sewing or composition or display being the minimum to achieve the purpose.

For me the transformations of form and story which take place in Weightman’s new exhibition are equally interesting. It’s a courageous piece of programming on Taigh Chearsabhagh’s part to mount this over the Christmas period. Matters of life and possible death.

© Ian Stephen, 2008

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