Review by Morag MacInnes
Robin Gillanders Highland Journey
25 Jun 2009 in Highland, Orkney, Visual Arts & Crafts
Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 5 July 2009
Robin Gillanders - Highland Journey (Drumochter)
IN 1934 Edwin Muir borrowed Stanley Cursitor’s car and went on a wee Scottish journey. He said: “my intention in beginning it was to give my impression of contemporary Scotland… the Scotland which presents itself to one who is not looking for anything in particular, and is willing to believe what his eyes and ears tell him.”
It was a six-day journey, which took him on a meditative path, “a thin layer of objectivity superimposed on a large mass of memory’, he calls it. The resulting book, Scottish Journey, is quitessential Muir – philosophical, nostalgic, elegant and above all, engaged – not with politics, but with the sense of something elusive, “the added value which every natural object acquires from one’s consciousness.”
It could with profit be re-read these days, when we’re so troubled about our identity. It also sounds like good advice for a visual artist – a gift, really – believe what your eyes tell you.
In 2006 photographer Robin Gillanders took a 5×4 camera and retraced Muir’s steps in a campervan, the shower room of which was converted to process the images. He took 60 black and white photos over 90 days (we’re told solemnly that photography takes longer than writing: have to say I doubt this…). The results are upstairs in the Pier.
A number of things occur to me. We’re a bit spoilt in Orkney, having had Gunnie Moberg’s creative, incisive images to enjoy; she set the photography bar high. She wasn’t afraid of colour, or mess, or a joke or two, and she never said more than she had to – the picture and its title did that.
Gillanders explains himself in little clips at the side of the pictures, as if he’s afraid we won’t ‘get’ them. Bad sign. Eschewing colour immediately dates the images; they feel like something from a bygone age. It seems to be a decision to do with simplicity and directness; but it just looks a bit dowdy and old hat.
The information leads us to expect a more committed, cutting edge journey than Muir’s. He’s described as a ‘romantic socialist, a quasi-nationalist’ and we’re invited to see this series of photos as a ‘fresh look at Scotland and her people.’
Well, sorry, but it’s not fresh and it’s not new. I’m reminded of a book we have called In a Sacred Manner We Live – photographs of the North American Indian by Edward S Curtis, that distinguished ethnographer who spent twenty five years charting the dying culture of the ‘Vanishing Savages’ in the early 1900s.
So when I get home I get the book out to see what it is that’s so like – and yes, it’s the black and white, and the way all the subjects stare out unsmilingly as if movement is the last thing on their minds. I thought photography caught moments; clearly I’m wrong.
This photographer is well known for his portraits and has written about how to make them good; a cardinal rule seems to be that you have to look like a Victorian. And it’s the business of memoralising that he’s in. He’s done work on Ian Hamilton Finlay’s garden, and Rousseau’s garden; he’s known for fashion work, advertising; he teaches at Napier, he’s clearly professional down to his fingertips.
But. The Gentleman’s Hairdresser shop in Glenbogle is looking its age – the tree looks tougher than the windows and there are no customers – it’s like a 50s postcard. In the Royal Oak in Dufftown, Pearl McKenna sits with Nipper the dog on the table and a posed short glass (it’s twenty-past-ten in the morning; I doubt that’s whisky). There’s a picture of Nipper behind her above the dead fire, and a dart board, and we’re told what a lovely kind person she is. It’s very careful and utterly unreal.
Oh, and here’s Liz White from the Railway Hotel in Tain – a right Scottish face, this one – no flesh on her, wee thin mouth, a tough nose and flash jewellery. Faces are compelling, of course; but it’s really more interesting wondering what the two guys behind her are arguing about. One of them has a flash watch… Liz is also a really kind and welcoming person who is bringing Tain into the 21st century with all the things her bar offers.
Now we’re moving into controversy – Dunrobin Castle, the Laggan Dam, the Ardnamurchan electricity supply. Oh, and some sheepdog trials. It’s all feeling a wee bit schematic, and the commentary earnestly reminds us that turbines are causing controversy. Gillanders doesn’t make his position explicit, but he’s clearly underwhelmed by the prospect of windmills, unless they’re on a proper, community-sized scale.
New Scotland embraces diversity, doesn’t it? Well, there’s an attempt at that – Dominic the poet sitting on his turfed roof in his wellies looking – well, like a poet who has lived there for ages. John and Celia Charity, who live in Ardindrean, gaze out at us, with their kids looking a bit uncomfortable (one of them’s doing Gaelic and Philosophy, so no wonder.) They arrived 25 years ago from the Midlands and have ‘totally embraced the local community and Gaelic culture – much more so than some locals.’ See these locals with their red cans and their Eastenders habit – what can you do?
We see the Ullapool hotel owner (Gillander went to a lot of hotels) who is ‘privileged to have people from different cultures working for her’ – she gets a nice bit of product placement and her staff are snapped in the back door; their nationalities are carefully recorded. They look a bit sullen. I wonder about profit margins.
‘Globalisation’ we’re told, ‘has brought a conformity of dress and life attitudes to young people everywhere, but there are always those who assert their individuality.’ So we see young Ewan from the Nicolson Institute, looking utterly conformist in his ripped jeans, hair gel, badges. I’m thinking, maybe this traveller is a bit naïve.
Finlay Macleod gazes sternly out – the crofter, the fighter for rights – he’s got a good strong face. ‘National identity is created by culture, language and place,’ we’re advised. Well, yes. True. No quarrel with that. But couldn’t we have had Finlay working some sheep or cutting the silage? That’s where the real crofting is. Everybody in the Co-op is saying, ‘did you get yours in yet?’ Instead, he’s trapped there like a Native American, in black and white nostalgia.
I thought maybe there was a sense of wickedness in the picture of a Durness couple – a Belgian and a South African – who run a craft place called Gallery Celtic Hippy. But on reflection I think not.
Then he gets to Orkney. A sensitive reader of Muir might have made fine images here – think of Muir’s elegiac poem ‘The Horses’, which laments the loss of companionship between man and beast. Gillanders contents himself with the view of Dundas Street we’ve all seen many times, if we are Stromnessians – it’s the one all photographers jump on – and a couple of pictures of Muir’s childhood home, the Bu. He finds the Brodgar stone with the 19th-century graffiti and asks – ‘who was J Isbister?’
Probably somebody could tell him.
A lazy show, I think. A wee jaunt with a bit of wild camping thrown in. Missing the essence of the real Highland journey, which, these days, is about boredom, and midgies, and Tour buses, and locally sourced ingredients, and Historic Scotland and dole offices, often as not.
