An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, until 3 September 2011

THE clacking of the Hattersley loom was as much a part of the Lewis and Harris soundscape as the corncrake, curlew or competitive gull. Colour mixes which came off these mechanical beasts were mostly muted and well-suited to blend with the moor so the angler or stalker would not shine out.

This exhibition is an elaborate presentation of a luxurious book, on walls but made on the premise of linking the colour and pattern in contemporary tweed to the landscape and peopled world of its Island of origin.

Installing the exhibition in An Lanntair (photo Ian lawson)

It’s nothing new for the subtle organic colour schemes (documented in old pattern-samples in the Loom Centre on Bayhead)  to be juxtaposed with surprising choices of strong colour or texture. In the 1960s Mrs Perrins’ Ceemo tweed label brought Breasclete crofters to New York to show their light, designer fabrics to a new fashion market.

And then there was Breanish Tweed, made at the end of a road in the southwest of Lewis and now ironically still made but near Skigersta, close to the northeast limit of the same landmass.  Luskentyre tweed is also marketed with a locality, and Lewis Tweed is another more individual product with a slightly provocative title.

So tweed designs have never been static and there have always been makers who produced cloth with more individuality than larger scale mills.

Ian Lawson has adopted the persona of a pilgrim journeyman. The opening pages show self-portraits of a man in a wide brimmed hat before a blazing driftwood fire, in the open landscape. His written introductions also acknowledge a sharing with  the community who survive in the landscape he celebrates.

One wall is devoted completely to landscapes – in different seasons and ranging over the terrain which qualifies for the orb mark, if foot- or hand-powered looms are used to produce it to the agreed criteria. He often uses slow exposures to blur waves or flowing water.  The technical quality of the digital image is sufficient to allow it to be presented in large scale formats.

Another section concentrates on the ongoing work – sheep being transported by boat or newly-sheared wool or man and dog at work before sudden mountains. Both portraiture and landscape photography is of good quality in the way you would expect competent commercial work done to an exacting commission.

But the whole project – including the forthcoming publication, layout, design and texts – are in fact the vision of the originating artist.

The longest gallery wall is devoted to one huge panel which is composed of a wide range of images of tweed and landscape, so closely hung that they become one work. It’s somewhere between a kaleidoscope and a collage. The composition is of overwhelming richness.

So a detail of banding in rock is set beside woven representation of something which could well be inspired by exactly that. Or an orange oxidized roof could suggest the fleck in the tweed detail set beside it.

But sometimes the orchestration of  the study is so tight that it  makes you suspect manipulation. Even if the colour has not in fact been processed or filtered, the tight juxtapositions seem to me to leave no room for a more emotive, subtle linking of  product and place.

It’s a popular show. The visitor’s book (also designed by Ian Lawson) lists enthusiastic reactions, one after another, with hardly a questioning response. You can well see why the show would be programmed at Festival time, rather than a more monochrome or  quiet response to our culture or issues.

I can well see the argument for presenting a show in this form at this time. However, the work seems me to suggest the need for a strong curator and editor, to bring out a more concentrated exploration of the theme.

The banners which fill the foyer – (one of An Lanntair’s strongest areas for showing work) are overwhelming, and suggest a domineering stage-management. The repetitions of golden graphics are a coffee table book writ large and high.  And the sheer volume of images inhibit the possibility of true, close observation of  the strongest images, which is a pity because I think there are some very strong compositions.

Take the sheep-shears – a key instrument of imagery – even if we all know from primary school geography that most tweed wool used in recent years is from Border Cheviots and our own produce normally went to carpets. There is a fine unfussy shot of the worn signal-red in the grips, giving way to the matt shine of chafed steel.

A  spirited pony at Luskentyre is a timeless icon. There is the hessian of a sack against the clumps of fleece which could really be human hair, from their appearance.  And the shot did indeed remind me of an early Murdo Macleod photograph where that suggestion is implied in a portrait of the Shawbost artist’s mother.  It’s an unconscious echo of last year’s prime-time show of island images.

The green brightness of a modern petrol container shines out by the marking paint in a boatload of  sheep. But that is a rare note of more hard realism in an exhibition which is romantic without apology.

There is the official permission to use the orb mark and an endorsement from Charles, Prince of Wales, as an introduction.  But there are also the overt statements of the photographer/author. And here I do have to suggest that a hard editor could have steered the product away from carrying all the traits of  a high quality commercial campaign.

The arts centre has cleverly juxtaposed a small showcase, in the bar area, for each of four contemporary designers who use tweed. The presentation could be a bit sharper, but the work and the statements of each designer are an interesting  counterpoint to the work in the main gallery.

Moving up a floor, the response of Island children to the return of the Lewis chessmen as invented board-games is a grand lively use of colour and design and idea.  The work confirms one of the main current strengths of the Stornoway arts centre as its education and outreach programme.

© Ian Stephen, 2011

Links

• An Lanntair
• Ian Stephen