The Design Element
GILES SUTHERLAND looks back at proceedings at the Northlands Creative Glass 2005 Conference.
IN THE KEVIN COSTNER film ‘Field of Dreams’ a mysterious voice intones the enigmatic phrase – “if […]

Enriching the Visual Culture
GILES SUTHERLAND reports on a pilot project to bring an arts trial to Sutherland.
IT HAS LONG BEEN recognised that the particular geography and low population of the Scottish […]

St Oran’s Chapel, Isle of Iona, until 22 October 2011 IN June 2011, the four artists who comprise the collective 6 ° West – Anne Devine, David Faithfull, Mhairi Killin and Veronica Slater – completed a week-long residency on Inch Kenneth (Innis Choinnich), a small island in private ownership a few miles north-east of Iona at the mouth […]

Mackintosh Museum, Glasgow School of Art, until  9 April 2011 IN GEOLOGICAL terminology an ‘erratic’ refers to a large boulder transported some distance from its original site by glacial movement. Here the term acts as a convenient metaphor for the work of Sutherland-based ceramist Lotte Glob, which finds itself translocated upon, literally, th…[Read more]

Timespan, Helmsdale, until 21 December 2010 THE term ‘field studies’ conjures up the idea of scientific investigation and observation — perhaps some aspect of natural history,  geology or geography. Moreover, field is, in itself, a wonderfully multi-layered word which combines the idea of a specific — and usually academic  — discipline with agricu…[Read more]

GILES SUTHERLAND reflects on the work of artist Ruth Macdougall in Sutherland. “At the heart of my work is the engagement and participation of those communities amongst whom I live. As a primary source of information and guidance, I rely on evolving relationships and subtle collaborations to arrive at a work that not only tells a story […]

Inverness Museum and Gallery, until 24 April 2010 IT WOULD be easy to miss this quiet, apparently modest and small exhibition but for one thing – it includes a magnificent, accomplished watercolour by John Mallord William Turner, painted in 1833 when the fifty-eight-year-old artist was at the height of his powers. Although Turner’s townscape of…[Read more]

Browns Gallery, Tain, until 6 April 2010 THE DEPICTION of trees in the history of art has a long tradition, but careful studies of individual trees are much rarer. Dürer, Rembrandt and Van Gogh were sufficiently skilled and interested to focus on trees as subject matter – but rarely exclusively so. Rembrandt’s ‘The Three Trees’ from […]

Timespan, Helmsdale, until 21 March 2010 ALASTAIR Cook’s black and white photographic images of Caithness and Sutherland – shot on 35mm film and hand-printed – repay close attention. What at first sight may appear as rather stark, unpeopled studies of landscape, geology and abandoned architecture slowly reveal themselves as carefully composed and…[Read more]

Timespan Gallery, Helmsdale, until 20 December 2009 TO MOST of the population of these islands, the county of Sutherland, lying at the northern end of mainland Britain seems far off, remote and impossibly northern. But the north coast of Scotland was called Sutherland because those who applied the appellation – the Vikings of Orkney, Shetland…[Read more]

Timespan, Helmsdale, until 25 October 2009 PATRICIA NIEMANN originally trained and worked as a goldsmith and ran her own free-lance design studio in Vilshofen, Bavaria, before relocating to Scotland where she became ‘hooked’ on glass, firstly as a post-graduate student at Edinburgh College of Art and later at North Lands Creative Glass in…[Read more]

GILES SUTHERLAND looks back on a stimulating Conference overshadowed by the death of a co-founder of North Lands Creative Glass. THIS YEAR’S annual North Lands Creative Glass Conference – the culmination of a year-round programme of workshops, residencies and other events – was overshadowed by the recent death of Dan Klein, one of North Lands’…[Read more]

Timespan Gallery & The Ice House, Helmsdale, until 2 August 2009 THE ICE HOUSE in Helmsdale has been described as the town’s ‘monumental deep freeze’. Owned by the Sutherland Estate, it once acted as a store for the salmon catch from the Helmsdale river and, as its name implies, as a storage facility for ice which was […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, until 26 April 2008 SINCE it first opened in Aberdeen’s Maritime Museum in 2005, Sue Jane Taylor’s exhibition ‘Oilwork – North Sea Diaries’ has toured the country. The final venue before some of the work goes on permanent display in the new 20th Century Gallery at the National Museum of Scotland in […]

An Extraordinary Life GILES SUTHERLAND considers the life of work of Hamish Henderson in the light of a new biography by Timothy Neat HAMISH HENDERSON was born on 11 November 1919 in his grandmother’s house, a small sandstone villa on the outskirts of Blairgowrie, in Highland Perthshire. Because his mother was unmarried and because of the still p…[Read more]

Timespan, Helmsdale, July 2007 AT A RECENT symposium entitled ‘Outreach/Reachout’ in Timespan a number of speakers discussed the highly successful series of artists’ residencies hosted by the organisation since 2005. The artists were Julian Meredith, Jonathan Macleod, Nigel Mullan, Gemma Petrie, Beatriz Pimenta Velloso, Catriona Murray and Janis…[Read more]

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until 29 July 2007 IT WAS Robert Burns who, in his poem ‘To A Louse’, published in 1786 wrote: O wad some Power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us! The poem has been cited often enough (perhaps too often) as a plea against human vanity; but in the […]

Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh, until 20 June 2007 IN THE history of art of the Scottish Highlands (if such a neatly defined entity can ever be said to exist) it’s interesting to ponder on the various treatments of landscape; the land is an abiding trope for artists wishing to explore what ‘Highland’ means to them. Depending on […]

Watermill Gallery, Aberfeldy, until 13 September 2006 IN THE INTRODUCTION to her current exhibition at the Watermill Gallery, Lotte Glob writes: “My creative process involves a close, continuing and intense relationship with the landscape and wilderness of the Scottish Highlands, a part of which is long hikes into the mountains, bringing back m…[Read more]

Timespan, Helmsdale, until 4 July 2006 NOW IN ITS third year, the Visual Arts Sutherland Open Studio Trail, which runs until the end of June, is an ideal way of meeting artists and seeing their work in situ. This is a popular and successful idea with similar models in other parts of the country where distance […]