Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 24 December 2011

I’M A newcomer to the world of the Swirry – that’s the Scottish Womens’ Rural Institute to the uninitiated amongst you.

I WAS  prepared for competition, for high standards, for quality – but not quite prepared for the fierce gaze of neighbouring Swirry ladies as you unload your produce, the eager point-counting, the close scrutiny of judges (wha’s he related to? Did he cut the sponge doon the middle afore he tried it?)

It’s a bit like war with no blood, just jam. I’m reminded of this at the annual Open Exhibition at the Pier – a very popular event, this, where people come to buy stuff and look for friends’ pictures. Over a hundred entries, full-on work for those hanging the stuff.

Christmas Open in the Pier

This year it’s clearly themed – flowers here, animals there, text heavy stuff in a wee room, abstract and off the wall in a big space. Because it’s so popular, there have to be guidelines. You must be resident. It must be current work (as in the Swirry, you mustn’t put the cross stitch you did for Amy’s wedding in year after year till she’s bringing her baby to see it…)

Some folk slipped through the net – annoying to see work from 1982 on the wall, nice as it is – but for the most part this is a large, messy, bitty, fairly joyous show, democratic and determinedly non-pretentious. There are exceptions, of course; but in general, the more pretension a work has – to philosophical or spiritual depth, to knowingness, to boundary breaking and shock jocking – the less successful it is. Look in the quiet corners and you’ll find jewels.

Flower studies haven’t recovered from the great Victorian cataloguers, unrivalled for patient accurate draughtsmanship. I associate rosa rugosa with sturdy Orkney hedgerows: here it’s domestic and tamed. To keep a flower alive as you’re painting is hard – look at Chardin. Or the Glasgow boys, for freedom and discipline in harmony.

It’s a good discipline, drawing from life, and one Sunday painters shy away from, precisely because it takes practice. The figurative work here  is tentative to say the least, and often tricksy – whatever is lettraset promarker? I’m caught by Shona Firth’s fine pantomine dame – wittily titled Isnae Disney, this is a tribute to local Orkney dramatic tradition, beautifully captured – an exotic costume, a homely familiar face topping it.

Next to it, the Papay makers Ivanov and Chan display another exotic, which reminds me of shrunken head totems in a marine museum – a canvas death man, roughly daubed with black. A warm, live evocation of life and entertainment juxtaposed with a ritual mask. Well done the Pier.

Window display

In another corner, Morag Tweedie’s evocative gentle meditation in mixed media, The Servant, tells its own little story – a glove, roses, net curtain.  Next to it – another good juxtaposition – Ingrid Garrioch has an intelligent  photographic study of masculinity, in sepia. It needs to be looked at more than once. I like Emma Ainley’s Loo Roll Memorial, a ribbon of colour while we’re on life and death and what’s in between. It’s witty without trying too hard.

Impossible to pass Diana Leslie’s work, simply because her palette is subtle, chalky and earthy, and her brushwork makes you feel good.  She works outdoors, and it’s a brave thing to do – if only because an overworked studio piece soon loses freshness. There are good landscapes on show, and there are landscapes which have sat too long on an easel whilst the artist fussed over them.

Each medium has its pluses and minuses, and you  can really see this here – acrylic paint needs a swift hand, or it dries dull and flat. Oil needs to be translucent and rough at the same time, and as for watercolour – it separates the bairns from the grown ups and no mistake. A wash too far, a jarring note, and you’ve had it. Look at Berte Zawadski’s Shapinsay Winter Scene for a masterclass in simplicity. Steph Spence’s Reflection captures something brooding and strange, a life beyond the image….

There’s photography here; there’s fine jewellery, textile work (Alec Webster’s Wave Studies are a finely judged balance of acrylic and threads). The domestic is on show – Sigrid Appleby’s tiny Stromness Window is loving, precise and utterly satisfying.

Christmas Open

There’s what I’d call the slightly weird and wacky – text based pieces, apocalyptic visions (Lynn Ralston’s Northside Birsay, sporting a very red sea, looks like a sci-fi film dating from when colour first turned everybody’s head a bit. It’s a bit Matisse, a brave shock.) Lyndsay Hall has made a shattered mirror with a red nose in the middle, called Vision of You. Marshall Luck is reinventing Bosch in three D, with his ship of fools, The Twelve Apostates – rowing boats filled with fishing men, Neptune in the corner, deep meaning all over the place.  The best of the thought provoking, experimental work for me is Hilary Seatter’s take on the movement of the sea – two silk prints, hung on top of one another, called Waves Micro. They  shift and shimmer, and the delicacy of the artist’s observation is clear.

I love the unexpected, and commend these folk for pushing boundaries – but it’s fine to catch Kirsty Grieve’s Weathered – orange and blue, almost peacock feather colours, but very gentle and restful. The same’s true of a window piece (windows always dress well, in the Pier), Sarah Smith’s Boat No 16 – it’s delicate and sad, perfectly put together.

Upstairs there’s a big pig and a big sheep. I’m reminded of 18^th century studies I saw in the Usher Gallery in Lincoln, of very big Tamworths. Animals by weight, or by fleece, have their place in rural celebration. However, the gem here, tucked away in a corner, is Colin Kirkpatrick’s elegant rumination about our relationship to the sea and the catch.

With its Inuit iconography and clean paleolithic line, it  is a small intelligent tonic. The title – West Shore Dream Time/Wakey Wakey Marine Baby, perhaps catches eloquently the modern dilemma facing agriculture and fisheries.  The same sense of history and direction is present in two monoprints by Sarah Kea  – Study for Traverse Board has a nicely nautical feel, and an elegiac touch that makes you return to it.

Maybe artists have to do more than simply depict the natural world. They have to say what it’s hard to express any other way. There are Orcadians doing this, and they’re to be commended.

There’s far more than I’ve mentioned, and you’ll find your own pleasures and dismays  – that’s the fun of it. Don’t whatever you do miss seeing it; and remember that the painting you are scrutinising may be the work of the lady on your left. Just like when you are hovering over the Black bun table in the Swirry Baking Show.

© Morag MacInnes, 2011

Links

• Pier Arts Centre