Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 8 November 2012
CAPE FAREWELL was created in 2001 to ‘ instigate a cultural response to climate change’.

IT’S NOW an international not-for-profit organisation based at the […]

Northlight Studio, Stromness, Orkney, until 29 September 2012
REBECCA Marr is more than a photographer.

YOU drop by this starry little exhibition on a dreich day, between getting the mince and posting the […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 17 November 2012
DEREK Williams was a chartered surveyor from Cardiff.

SOUNDS like the start of a particularly British psychological thriller, doesn’t it. Maybe a […]

Northlight Gallery, Stromness, Orkney, until 16 July 2012, and elsewhere
SPIT in Stromness these days and you hit an artist.

THEY’RE all here doing stone pictures (mostly awful – take my tip, just visit the […]

Various venues, Orkney, 22-27 June 2012
THE exuberance of this year’s festival is obvious from the programming – it’s bursting out of the straight-jacket that’s a week.

EVENTS start before the opening […]

Pier Art Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 18 August 2012
THE PIER is hoaching with folk asking where the toilets are and why there isn’t a café.

UPSTAIRS there’s a chap looking after a visiting celeb. He waves […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 9 June 2012
IF FOR any reason the spring forecast – economic, political, or temperature-wise, whichever you will – has been getting you down, this exhibition will put […]

St Magnus Cathedral, Kirkwall, Orkney, 8 March 2012, and touring WHAT happens when a fine poet bounces off another fine poet? You get a new insight into both. COMPOSER and writer Lise Sinclair is from a croft on Fair Isle, and her writing, at times wistful, at times gutsy, is thoroughly bedded down in her island. With […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 17 March 2011 THIS IS an intriguing pairing. BOTH shows, in their different ways, are enigmatic, almost teasing. This can be delightful and also frustrating – I’ll try and explain why. Rik Hammond had three weeks at the Ness of Brodgar site – yes, that one, the one you saw through […]

Orkney Museum, Kirkwall, Orkney until 24 February YOU know how M&S in Inverness assumes an importance totally out of proportion if you live in the rural North? SO when you are catching the bus up the A9 you have to go in and get a wee snack to sustain you whilst you listen to all the Golspie, […]

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 […]

39 Albert Street, Kirkwall, Orkney, until 9 December 2011 THREE very different artists have taken over an empty commercial premises in the middle of town and filled it with wildly contrasting work. IT’S AN interesting show, not just aesthetically, but philosophically, because it nicely encapsulates the problem which has beset makers since…[Read more]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, 29 October 2011 I THINK we should let artists out more often. They’re a solitary bunch, squirreling away in the studio or contemplating a cliff: but when they get together you can’t shut them up and the results can be very thought-provoking. The Pier was host to this animated – very animated  […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 5 November 2011 SYLVIA WISHART (1936-2008) began life in a house on Clouston’s Pier, in the centre of Stromness, a couple of doors away from where, fifteen years earlier, George Mackay Brown was born. Their lives were intertwined a bit: but Sylvia was her own woman, and cut her own solitary […]

Pier Art Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 14 August 2011 I OFTEN think that the art world – despite all its protestations and its open days and its community workshops – is a very closed shop indeed. It reminds me of the Magic Circle – you only get in if you know the secret of the trick and […]

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney, until 13 August 2011 SEE, this is what happens when you get old – young turks take your history and re-invent it better. Constant Reader, I was there in the 60s, and unlike many, remember it. I remember  my Biba trouser suit, my long white socks, the day I asked the Stromness […]

Pierhead to Museum, Stromness, Orkney, until 26 June 2011 WELL, this is a jolly wheeze. I remember reading somewhere about a community project in Wales  I think, which did the same thing in a village; and I’m just back from Brighton, where, on a totally different scale, enormous Regency piles gave themselves over to Art for the week of […]