Taigh Chearsabhagh, Lochmaddy, North Uist, until 29 October 2011

I DIPPED into the BA Fine Art graduates exhibition, presently on show at Taigh Chearsabhagh, and slowed down to take it all in.

The immediate reaction was that a large number of individually strong works all had something very much in common. There was a wide range of techniques employed – video, conventional and digital photography, drawing, painting, performance, sculpture and installation but it really is a group exhibition rather than a dutiful showing of work produced to gain a degree.

Amanda Rae - Decommissioned

The degree course is itself a significant achievement. It seems to me to demonstrate the value of productive partnerships. Lews Castle College first linked with Taigh Chearsabhagh to establish a Foundation Course, giving the opportunity for emerging artists to pursue their arts education on home turf but also attracting visiting ones to become immersed in a situation where you cannot help but be aware of the natural environment.

Then a further partnership with Moray College of Art led to the possibility of the full degree course, awarded by UHI, working with the three partner organizations. But the teaching and studio work is done at Taigh Chearsabhagh, and the role of the North Uist environment seems to me crucial, as expressed in this fine body of work.

I’ve been aware of the work of one of these graduate artists so can comment on developments which appear to have happened during the course. There is no way of observing whether this is because new possibilities are introduced by teaching and by interaction with colleagues or whether  it is simply that the opportunity to focus fully on making art (rather than having to squeeze hours in between other priorities)  fosters the new work.

But Marnie Keltie’s wall-drawing and aritst’s book are the excellent products of a sustained approach to a subject – the interaction of the human and the natural on an exposed shore.

Marnie Keltie - Dislocation

The pigments which carry the lines have been hand-made from collected materials. In one way the work seems near abstract and in another it captures the original lines of wind and tide on the shore in a way that is indeed representational. It’s a fine product, where a strong idea finds a sympathetic medium.

I was reminded of the late Bob Callender’s astonishing recreations of debris on tidelines, when I encountered Marnie Keltie’s series of works  made with oil on linen. You might think it’s impossible to make anything new from the clash of detritus on a landscape but the handmade book rings out with one startling capture after another.

Laura Donkers - The Nature of a Finding

Deborah Ann MacVicar also uses the form of an individual book to communicate her quirky results of performances in landscape. Some of these are also realized as prints on fabric (cyanotype on cotton) and recall the eery quality of the blue men of the stream stories and other folk-tales.  A video installation catches  a shamanistic dance of antlers. The evidence made me want to see an actual performance work.

One single work brought you skillfully out of the gallery geography by making a spiral of the corner of the room. You were led along a curving installation – heavy paper stretched to entice you along a single drawing. This is realized by Laura Donkers in lichen ink, charcoal and graphite – so again the environment is producing the materials used to describe it.

The free drawing is bold and direct in one sense and yet the end result has delicacy within the robust framework. The style reminded me of the work of Laura Drever from Orkney, derived from observing birds and recently published by Brae Editions in a  collaboration with the poet Lesley Harrison.

The artist has been awarded an artists residency in Arteles, Finland, continuing well-established links between Hebridean island arts bodies and Finland. She plans to explore the idea of planting as drawing so we can hope to see subsequent results.

You are invited to do a bit of exploring along the drying and covering routes to tidal islands in the work shown by Lorraine Burke. There is a meeting of the contemporary – in digital sound recordings and an older technology in the use of large format camera. The artist describes building the visual work from the soundscape. There is the eerie quality of struggling memory in the transposing of recorded light to black vinyl print.

Deborah Ann MacVicar - Self-Portrait

The range of this show needs the space afforded by both main gallery areas. Unfortunately, some of the wear and tear and technical issues prevented me from engaging with some of the works described in the  interpretation material. But that’s part of the risks which balance the gains of the digital world.

Amanda Rae’s work is mixed media assemblage so only needed adequate lighting to reveal its intriguing qualities. It’s as if whole libraries of stories has been chewed and spat and re-assembled into arresting motifs – a caged bird or a struggling human form.

Mairi Thompson takes the title “Inside Out” for her video. You hear the balancing “Outside In” from the lyric by The Police. Now I have to say I somehow missed this work and am not in a position to return to Uist to see it so here is a quote from Mary Morrison’s review of the exhibition for the UHI website:

“The filming mixed close-ups with slight shifts in focus, pausing on iconic objects, such as the kitchen sink, for a moment only, enticing the eye to want to unravel more.  Everyday drudgery transformed into art, the focus on the necessary, anti-heroic business of housework both elevated and celebrated its performance.”

Anne Corrance Monk - Untitled

A large scale colour digital print by Anne Corrance Monk again balances the natural cycles of growth and decay with human intervention. It is a poly-tunnel – nearly as significant a mark on the Hebridean landscape as the peatstack or corrugated iron shed. I was reminded of photographic studies of American townscapes or interior landscapes of motel rooms. This art is all in the eye – close observation framing what is seen so it is all contained in its own harmony.

I was not able to see the glass book containing a complementary series of digital prints but I was able to thumb through the prints themselves. Just simply mounted on card pages and shown as an unbound folio. The form of presentation just didn’t seem to matter as you became lost in the gradual changes in human and natural signs, lit by  the famous darts of light between Uist clouds.

© Ian Stephen, 2011

Links

• Taigh Chearsabhagh
• Review on Lews UHI Website
• Ian Stephen