An Lanntair, Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, until 20 January 2013

THE title really does say what this bright, light, winter-solstice show in an Lanntair’s main gallery is about – “the sea that’s within me”.

THE tapestry-maker Fiona Hutchison points out that there is no spot in Scotland more than fifty miles from the sea. But she is also a sailor and therefore one who who has no option but to look closely at the surface of water for clues as to the forces which are acting upon it at any time. A sailing vessel can’t just disregard eddies if forward momentum is to be maintained. And I’d say the subject of this celebratory exhibition is the interplay of warp and weft, seen as cross-currents.

"warp and weft, seen as cross-currents" - work from the exhibition (Ian Stephen)

But the artist, trained as a tapestry weaver, takes her craft into a huge range of variations. Her materials do not simply criss-cross a chosen format but at times seem barely contained within the scheme. You get a sense of energy in all the diverse works. This is an artist who loves her medium as well as her subject. She is inventive in her range of different scales, in presentation and in materials. But restricting the palette to one dominated by the blue-grey-turquoise and whites range, gives a strong sense of unity.

There are two large-scale tapestry works, both of which seem to have found their own dimensions for the subject. One is simply called “wave”, but you get a sense of the sweep of a whole shoreline – the complex geography which results in the shape of a particular wave. It is balanced by another, more conventional woven work, “dark sea”, where wisps of reds suggest the extraordinary force of bright colour you often see in the natural world, shocking and near garish.

Diptych from the exhibition (Ian Stephen)

Elsewhere, several diptychs, sometimes boxed in acrylic glass, house woven objects which give close scrutiny to the results of turmoil in the natural world. There is also a triptych of harmonic pieces but with significant variations between the individual items. “The work is not a literal translation or a representation of the sea but something remembered, a metaphor for our lives.”

So the ‘tapestry” could be only a few inches square and could contain a shard of glass to represent a section of ice-flow. Monofilamemt netting can have a mind and memory of its own and leap into its own shape, known universally by fishermen as “a bundle of bastards”. But Hutchison harnesses phenomena, or rather she observes and represents. She doesn’t fight against the currents.

Floor show (Ian Stephen)

Part of the pleasure in this show is from the musical balance between the elements. The artist brought more work than she hung – the L-shaped gallery does not have the linear space you might think it does, at first glance. Instead, a floor-mounted installation, takes you round the corner. A series of paper scrolls, laid in salt, suggest a Paisley pattern swirl to sweep you through the space. Fiona reported a very good partnership with an Lanntair, in selecting the works and balancing them out.

I might have been tempted to make it a shade more spare still, but on the other hand would have found it difficult to decide which of the treasures to edit out. There is for example a series of five square format open box-frames. Each contains a small tapestry, not quite uniform in size and nowhere near uniform in the orientation of the form within it or in the way the materials comprise a made thing.

This fine winter exhibition is thus its own single tapestry, made out of individual tapestries.

© Ian Stephen, 2013

Links

• An Lanntair
• Fiona Hutchison
• Ian Stephen