Review by Mandy Haggith
Where Two Tides Meet
19 Aug 2012 in Highland, Showcase, Visual Arts & Crafts
An Talla Solais, Ullapool, until 9 September 2012
AN Talla Solais is so full of the sea, with two exhibitions on maritime themes, you can almost smell the salt and hear the spray.
AFTER the success of their ‘wee boats’ fundraising exhibition last year, Mara is made up of a glittering shoal of tiny artworks gifted by dozens of local artists. Here are mosaics, tapestries, paintings, drawings, all on a miniature scale, and every possible expression of the sea: waves, dunes, fish, seaweed, gannets and gulls, shells and creels, boats, lighthouses, turtles and seahorses.
Fiona Hutchison - Quiet Harbour
If you want a bucket and spade, there are lots to choose from, with or without sand, and in this ingenious exhibition, everyone can afford a work of art of their own. There is a silent auction running until Monday 20 August, and after that, any remaining pieces will go on sale in aid of this community-run gallery.
The jostle and exuberance of the Mara show is balanced by the meditative calm of Fiona Hutchison’s sea tapestries. The centre piece of Where Two Tides Meet is a huge wall hanging, a gorgeous watery sea and skyscape with mesmerising cloud lights and patterns of ripples and flow. Like many of the works, it is predominantly pale blue and white, with just a few flecks of red in the sky bringing life to the cool blue, and it is this restrained palette that gives all the works in this show their sense of serenity.
The wall hanging is titled ‘How Calm the Wild Water’, a phrase from a G F Dutton poem. It’s an apt title, as the water shown is both calm and wild. Look closely at its textures and the rhythm of the weaving, and it begins to splash and spume. It reminds us that underneath the gentleness of colour and a rippling surface, the sea holds unlimited power.
Fiona Hutchison - Where Two Tides Meet
Other works are also inspired by poetry. ‘Sea Door’, inspired by a George Mackay Brown, has a darker colouring with rich, painterly shades of purple and another reminder of the deadly power of the ocean. A few other works, like ‘Midnight Sea Mist’, also explore those night-time blues, but mostly the tapestries are as light as a morning on the water.
Some of the work is small scale, and you must look closely at the clever way that threads echo ripples and show surf breaking splashily out of the underlying weave. With wool, silk, linen, nylon and paper fibres, the motion of water ruffles across these images. Some are recognisable seascapes, the moon’s reflection, or a loose wave-washed ocean, while others are more abstract arrangements of glass and fibres, evoking the paraphernalia of harbours: nets and lines, boxes and buoys.
Some of the most intriguing works are those where, instead of a woven fabric as the base, Fiona uses paper. Three beautiful images of rain, with lovely splodges and stains, are stitched onto tracing paper. A line of ripples is evoked by blue paper folded and sewn into a complex and highly tactile corrugation.
Fiona Hutchison - White Water
Breaking out of two dimensions, Fiona has included a delightful little woven boat, threads of spray spilling across its gunwhales, not taking itself too seriously. She’s a sailor too, and no doubt a dab hand at knots.
It’s the big watery hangings that really dazzle in this exhibition, tapestries like ‘Where Two Tides Meet’, with its thrilling thrash of white water under a pondering sky. The warp and weft is manipulated so deftly it is as if the images have been painted with thread, or woven with light. The result are richly textured images that combine the wildness of the ocean with peaceful mystery.
© Mandy Haggith, 2012
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