Review by Ian Stephen
Air Iomlaid (On Exchange)
22 Apr 2010 in Visual Arts & Crafts
Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh, until 9 May, then at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Isle of Skye, from 5 June 2010
YOU WOULDN’T think an artist best known for a hermit tendency would be a natural lead artist for education projects. But I saw Julie Brook enthuse Primary schoolkids when they visited her Mingulay show in Collins Gallery, Glasgow. I also saw large-scale drawings at Kelvingrove, some years ago. These were made with Glasgow pupils and individual elements contributed to impressive cityscapes. So it seems, for Julie Brooks, life is a balance between sojourns in depopulated places and vibrant family and community life.
Air Iomlaid exhibition opening
The Fruitmarket Gallery is balancing its eclectic exhibitions programe with an accessible show derived from an ambitious Gaelic language conversation between Tolcross Primary School, Edinburgh, and Bun-sgoil-Shlèite, in Skye. It’s not a document of the juxtaposition of urban and island imagery but an exhibition in its own right.
Brooks was the lead artist in a team which began with the aim of bringing the pupils to engage with an unfamiliar landscape through drawing and painting. Another stated aim was to avoid fostering one style above another, but rather looking for the individual young artists to develop their own ways.
But strangely, the high quality drawing and painting on display downstairs in the Fruitmarket could indeed be the work of one school or one class or even one artist. There is a great variety, but it reminds me of collected bodies of Scottish landscape work shown elsewhere in Edinburgh.
I’m thinking of certain periods represented in the permanent collection of the City Arts Centre, across the road. And then there’s the studies of Iona and other West of Scotland paintings in the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s current showing of themed groups of work relating to the use of colour.
Maybe the similarities in the children’s paintings are inevitable when you have a tight project theme. But it must be huge motivation for the participants when they see their contributions building up to an exhibition on this scale.
When you take the walk upstairs, the impact of the collective work hits you with force. Tables of used but bonny blue sketch pads have a huge presence. The charcoal drawings and free studies spill out, revealing confidence and fluency as well as enthusiasm. These are clearly at the heart of the project. And, beside them, city and island imagery is mixed into huge scale landscapes in monochrome. The individual efforts are orchestrated.
On the evidence of this we are looking at a very fine learning process. Later exchanges of the Gaelic medium group brought in poets, animators and film-makers. The ambition of the project is reflected in a handsome catalogue and the exhibition will move on to the Isle of Skye in June.
© Ian Stephen, 2010
