MORAG MACINNES enjoys a trip down memory lane WELL, THIS is a nostalgia trip for me. I was that fifties bairn with me socks and sandals, me navy blue knickers and me Saturday sixpence, off down the street to enhance the coffers of the local entrepreneurs. The Stromness Museum is a jewel for lots of reasons – […]

MORAG MACINNES heard Dr Donna Heddle trace connections with the Sagas in the poet’s work THE GEORGE Mackay Brown Fellowship instituted a Memorial Lecture on the poet in 2007, to be held on or as near St Magnus Day (16 April), as possible. Aficionados will know how important to the author the saint was – the […]

MORAG MACINNES explores the highs and lows of colour and shape at the Pier THE CONTEMPORARY Art Society celebrates its centenary this year. Over the years it has gifted over 8000 works to British collections. The Pier has not only received four works, but also benefited from the CAS’s partnership with the Scottish Arts Council, which […]

MORAG MACINNES enjoys an imaginative reinvention of iconography from Orkney artist Colin Johnstone I LIKE literate art; works that inhabit lots of references comfortably, competently, and in an understated, not a show-offy kind of way. The school of ‘see me, see what I can do with ironic postmodern references to baffle you poor viewers plus a […]

MORAG MACINNES surveys the results of a an exchange show with makers from distant Maine. THIS EXHIBITION is the result of a serendipitous accident – an American printmaker, Jennifer Strode, with half an hour to kill at the end of her Orkney holiday, pops into the Porteous Brae Gallery in Stromness while waiting for the ferry. […]

MORAG MACINNES dusts off her stetson for the premiere of Orcadian writer Duncan McLean’s tribute to Shetland’s Thomas Fraser THE PREMIERE of this National Theatre of Scotland production of Duncan McLean’s Long Gone Lonesome was packed to the gunnels. The show sold out before it was even advertised in the papers (how did that happen?) leaving a […]

MORAG MACINNES finds quiet at the core of the work of Thomas and Laurie Clark YELLOW AND BLUE is a pleasingly minimal title for this pleasingly minimal exhibition-cum-installation. Thomas A Clark puts works on walls; he’s just recently done an installation at the New Stobhill Hospital in Glasgow, attempting, Alistair Peebles the gallery owner…[Read more]

MORAG MACINNES investigates Roger Ackling’s recent work on Orkney THIS EXHIBITION could have been a curator’s nightmare. There are so many pieces. Many are small. They are titled by number and material – ‘Voewood 2008 sunlight on wood with wire’, ‘Voewood 2008 sunlight on wood’ – rather than having tricksy names which might divert and direct […]