An Leabhar Mor and LK243 UnderSail are two exhibitions which will be opening in an talla solais, Ullapool Visual Arts on Friday the 27th of April 7 – 9 pm.

Both exhibitions will run from the 28th April till the 20th of May 2012, from 10 – 5 pm daily, at an talla solais Ullapool Visual Arts, Market Street, Ullapool, Wester Ross, Scotland, IV26 2XE. Web:  www.antallasolais.org

Leabhar Mòr na Gàidhlig / The Great Book of Gaelic

A major international touring exhibition will visit Ullapool in April – May 2012. Twenty Five artworks from An Leabhar Mòr – The Great Book of Gaelic will be on display from April 27th in three village venues, the Ceilidh Place, the MacPhail Centre and An Talla Solais where the majority of the pieces will be exhibited and where an opening event featuring some of the project’s key contributors will take place.

The Leabhar Mòr was originated by Pròiseact nan Ealan – The Gaelic Arts Agency and for the past ten years it has been touring constantly in the UK, Ireland, France, Austrailia, Canada and most recently opened the Tartan Day 2012 celebrations at Ellis Island in New York City. It features the work of more than 200 poets, visual artists and calligraphers from Scotland and Ireland to create a major contemporary artwork in the form of a visual anthology.

The 100 Gaelic poems have been nominated as the favourite works of poets and writers such as Seamus Heaney and Canada’s Alasdair MacLeod. The selection features works from almost every century from the 6th to the 21st and includes the earliest Gaelic poetry in existence. Comedy, tragedy, love, death, the spiritual and the bawdy are all represented in poems by Sorley MacLean, Iain Crichton Smith, Kevin MacNeil, Nuala Ni Dhomhnall and many others.

The 100 visual artists – fifty from each country – were commissioned to respond to the poetry in a variety of media. The artists include Will MacLean, Alan Davies, Frances Walker, John Byrne, Rita Duffy and Alasdair MacLennan whose works are as varied in their mediums as they are in their utilised materials and influences.

A small team of calligraphers, led by Frances Breen, worked in collaboration with the artists to integrate the key lines of poetry into the art-works. The result is an extraordinary celebration in words and pictures of Gaelic culture from the earliest times to the present day.

The exhibition illuminates the richness and beauty of the linguistic and cultural bonds that connect the Scottish and Irish Gàidhealtachds and makes accessible and eye-catching demonstrations of those bonds by bringing them to community forums.

LK243 UnderSail Exhibition Tour is launched

For the first time during the Tall Ships’ Races in 2011, there was an artist in residence and her work is about to go on tour in the UK and Norway.

 The touring exhibition has been formed from work created by artist Imi Maufe as a result of a two-part residency. The first part was sea based, onboard the Swan, a 1900 Shetland based herring drifter, during the Tall Ships’ Races (June – August 2011). The second part, a land based month (August – September 2011), at Taigh Chearsabhagh in North Uist and with Shetland Arts in Shetland.

Imi Maufe, a UK artist based in Norway, was appointed to the LK243 UnderSail residency through a formal selection process.

As well as being the resident artist, Imi Maufe was also a crew member onboard the Swan, involving herself in all activities on board and at each port. Imi’s bed and working space was in the boat’s main cabin in one of the larger wooden bunks (2.14m x 60cm x 80cm) screened by a curtain.

The exhibition is touring in the Bunk Box, which was created to fit at the end of the bunk used by Imi for the duration of the voyage, as a storage unit. It was designed so that it can be transported by the Swan or by more conventional means to each of the host galleries for the tour.

The LK243 UnderSail exhibition is being co-ordinated by Shetland Arts and will tour to galleries in the UK and Norway between April 2012 and April 2013. Imi’s work can be viewed as a handling collection direct from the box or displayed, as an exploded body of work, in a gallery space. The exhibition tour commences in Ullapool at the end of April, from where it will go to North Uist, Bergen, Newcastle and finally, return to Shetland at the end of the year.

Clair Aldington, Visual Arts Development Officer at Shetland Arts, said: “It has been a huge privilege over the last 3 years to work with the Swan Trust and Taigh Chearsabhagh in developing the LK243 UnderSail residency and to see it come to fruition in such an amazing way. Imi’s creativity and the work she has produced is a beautiful recollection and accounting of a voyage and a unique experience. We are grateful to the funders, Creative Scotland, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, and Scotland’s Islands for making this project possible.”

During her residency, Imi came into contact with over 1,500,000 Tall Ships’ Races visitors, crews from 32 different countries, and 70 vessels from 13 different countries.

As artist in residence Imi Maufe, described: “The time on the Swan has been an amazing experience; challenging, calming, exciting, funny and unforgettable. Being part of the crew that took us from Waterford all the way to Halmstad, sharing the boat with 45 different people along the way has taught me about myself and about the art of living with strangers in small spaces. There have been hard moments and wonderful moments. Over 500 drawings of boats have been collected during the harbour visits, 43 wooden postcards have been cast in the sea and six placed in postboxes. I don’t feel like I have sat still for more than ten minutes at a time. This has not only been a sailing adventure, but also one of discovering the local life and culture in each port, and also what the tall ship’s races are really about, and that isn’t just about sailing, but this huge scale international movement for young people! (and all the older ones that make it happen).”

Peter Campbell of the Swan Trust said of the residency: “Having an artist aboard has proved to be a new experience for the Trust. It has demonstrated how a residency can be successfully operated within the confines of the Swan. The residency generated considerable interest in the vessel in each port visited and as an organisation the Swan Trust has gained greater recognition for its sail training activities. The presence of an artist in residence was considered an innovative way in which to generate interest in sail training and was a contributing factor in the Swan Trust being awarded the Sail Training Organisation of the Year trophy at the annual conference of Sail Training International in Toulon, France in November 2011. The project has resulted in the artist printing a set of curtains for the Swan’s bunks which will act as a talking point for future sailors.’”

LK243 UnderSail is an exhibition that aims to capture the moments, the adventure and the ordinary and extraordinary events that took place en route.

Both exhibitions will run from the 28th April till the 20th of May 2012, from 10 – 5 pm daily, at an talla solais Ullapool Visual Arts, Market Street, Ullapool, Wester Ross, Scotland, IV26 2XE. Web:  www.antallasolais.org