Alternative Realities

It was late last year that Jude put forward the idea of holding a 3rd Year show, to widespread support. Initial Professional Practice meetings, with Gill as expert advisor, identified the dates when the Academy Gallery space was available, and we settled on opening 10 to 16 February. That gave everyone time to work on pieces over the break.

The class really worked well together, with a well-organised committee, supported by the others, all communicating via a Facebook page. Facebook allowed everyone to feel informed and able to contribute, including more distance students. Everyone contributed £10 at the outset to avoid the extra hassle of fundraising. A poster was drafted, and, as the show date grew closer, a list of work drawn up, and an invigilation rota. There was close liaison with Steve the technician over health and safety.  It was agreed that personal contact details and prices should not be part of this show.

Steve warned that the allocation of spaces is often a source of conflict, but there was actually very little, and everyone was accommodating to other folks' needs. There was a range of work to be shown, including projection and installations, as well as painting and photography. Part of the success of this process was that Jude and the organising committee allowed a lot of time for contributors to put forward their needs in terms of space, light and electric sockets. Spaces were then allocated in order of need, with the most flexible last. That seemed to work well.

Steve was very helpful during the hanging process on 6 February. He was able to give very practical advice - for example on optimum hanging heights (c.58" for the centre of a piece), and on the way in which spot lighting could be used to highlight particular pieces. He assisted some contributors with hanging, and was able to introduce new ideas linked to the meaning of the piece, rather than to 'order' for its own sake. Although I have not had much experience of hanging, I felt that the whole composition of the show worked well, within limits of space and electrical sockets. Not everyone was available to hang their pieces at exactly the same time, so there was not really an opportunity to reconsider locations on the basis of how it all looked. Without too much re-hanging or calculation, however, diverse pieces were hung side by side and, in my view, worked pretty well together. There was probably scope for some improvement on show composition, but I think we did well.

Meanwhile posters were put up all over Elgin, and there was online publicity on Facebook and on the Moray College webpage, thanks to Gill. 

The opening was very well attended, and there was positive feedback on the quality and standard of the work and exhibition as a whole. Two non-contributor volunteers at the 'bar' out in the foyer did a sterling job in ensuring that people had wine/juice and nibbles, allowing the artists to talk with visitors about their work. 

The invigilation rota worked fairly well, although perhaps the table could have been more visible to visitors. It was helpful to have one evening opening, for those working during the day. More would probably have improved visitor numbers, but would have required invigilation from students with domestic responsibilities outside college, so was not practical. While I was invigilating a school group and a special needs class visited the show, as well as several individuals.

The show was taken down successfully. It was probably of a standard that it could have been up for longer, had the Academy Gallery been available. We did not collect visitor numbers, but it would be useful to share feedback from invigilators, as well as from Steve, the tutors and all those who participated in the show. I certainly found it a good learning experience, and a confidence-builder. While there was quite a bit of work involved, it was a good demonstration of the quality of exhibition that students can mount with relatively little 'expert' input. 



 

Relate North - inspiration!!

Relate North 2016 - what a whirlwind four days!

As soon as I arrived in Sumburgh on Monday and was driven to Lerwick hostel by Pat, a student on the new Fine Art degree course, there was plenty to be doing. 

The exhibition was being set up at Mareel, the main arts centre, and the nearby Gutter's Hut, a brightly painted tin building used in the past for fish processing. Artists had arrived from the Komi Republic in Siberia, from Iceland, from Canada and Lapland, and were busy in the Gutter's Hut negotiating wall and floor space for their pieces.

hanging the show in the Gutter's hut

I helped with clearing the room ready for the pieces to be hung, and discussing hanging arrangements for our Northern Exchange exhibit. We were sharing an alcove room with another exhibitor, and had to work out the best arrangement for our two monitors of film and four ipods with speakers to play the participant interviews from Iceland. Susan Timmins and her husband Davy set to work installing the wall fixings, while Roxane took me up to Shetland College for a planning meeting with the other helpers. We started to collate the delegates packs. I was responsible for organising the labels for the exhibits, using the details from the conference catalogue that had been designed and printed in Finland.

Planning meeting

The conference proper at the Museum started on Tuesday afternoon after the Arctic Sustainable Art and Design meeting. Delegates continued to arrive during the morning. 

'Dome' being erected in the  Sail Loft

One issue was finding a space large enough for us to erect the Northern Exchange replica 'radar dome', on which the thoughts and memories of participants had been recorded in Iceland in UV pen. Liz Crichton and I trialed the dome at Mareel, but there were health and safety issues by a fire exit, so we had to explore our final option - the 'Sail Loft', a stone boat house opposite the Museum. I managed to persuade a Museum assistant to help me move 3 large wooden boats to make a space for the dome, and Liz and I re-erected it there, on the flagstone floor. We had had plenty of practice in Iceland, so we were just in time to head across to the Museum for the first papers. 

The conference itself was very inspiring. Although it coincided with the election of Donald Trump, its whole focus on collaboration, social transformation through creativity, and the importance of nature and place, helped to dispel some of the the gloom over money-driven politics. The theme of Relate North 2016 - Practising Place - Heritage, Art and Design for Creative Communities, was brought into focus as more relevant than ever to today's world.  

There were many highlights. The lives and work of Scottish women film-makers Margaret Tait and Jenny Gilbertson were a feature of the first day. I was particularly interested in Tuija Hautala-Hirvioja's paper on Sami artist Nils-Aslak Valkeapaa and the way in which he used landscape drawing to strengthen a Sami sense of place and social inclusion.

That evening Liz and I worked until late bolting the UV-inscribed triangles onto our dome, and I worked around the exhibition placing labels next to the exhibits in both Mareel and the Gutter's Hut.

Ruth Beer and protest weaving

Wednesday was the longest day of papers, and absolutely fascinating. Janette Kerr, a landscape artist based in Somerset and Shetland, spoke about taking part in an artists' voyage to Svalbard, and about a northern sense of place. Professor Herminia Din joined by Skype from Alaska to talk about a wonderful multi-year collaborative project and book about using public spaces for communal winter artworks using snow and ice. Professor Vladimir Durnev from the Syvtyvkar spoke about indigenous ceramics, referring to ceramics as the 'first art from nothing'. Jaana Erkkila, Professor of Visual Arts from the University of Lapland, described creating cross-disciplinary 'Travelling Laboratories for Artistic Thinking', which have important implications for sustainable tourism and sense of place. Timo Jokela, Director of ASAD, spoke about the need for Place-appropriate public design. Ruth Beer, Professor of Visual Art and Material Practice at Emily Carr University in Vancouver, and a campaigner of long-standing for indigenous rights and environmental protection, was particularly inspiring. She is involved in a federally-funded action research project entitled Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines, which uses a radical form of counter-mapping to explore the complex dynamics of resource extraction and indigenous rights. This relates in particular to the demise of the indigenous oolichan fishery as a result of river damming and development, and the recent approval of a pipeline to carry oil to the coast from the Alberta Tar Sands, crossing 30 tribal areas.  There were many other interesting speakers. At the close of the day Roxane Permar presented our Northern Exchange project, and I was one of the panel for questions.

That evening I enjoyed a curry with Timo Jokela, Glen Coutts, Mirja Hiltunen, Elina Harkonen, Susan Timmins and Davy Stane - it was good to have longer to chat and to get to know some of the other organisers better. 

Thursday was the final day of speakers and the grand opening of the exhibition. Once again the standard of papers was high, with Gina Wall speaking on the traces of colonialism in Glasgow, Mirja Hiltunen on art projects to help integrate refugees into Finnish communities, Keith Smyth on some progressive thoughts on learning as a broad public good that should not be limited to academic institutions but extending to public spaces.   

Ruth Beer knitting

Icelandic collaborative project - letters

The most inspiring paper was given about what, in my view, was the best collaborative art project of the whole event. Asthildur Jonsdottir, who had worked with us in Iceland, collaborated with five other Icelanders, artists, a psychologist and an anthropologist. Their project created links between Iceland and Shetland in a range of interesting ways. The five instigators wrote to Shetlanders by letter, asking them to describe the sights, sounds and smells of a favourite place. They took the resulting descriptions and translated them into colours and pictures, then took Icelandic wool of the right colours with them to Shetland and held a participatory knitting and story-telling event with a Shetland knitting group. The knitters used the Icelandic wool to 'knit' the colours of the places described, while being filmed telling stories. Finally, images of this event were beamed back to Iceland, where the remaining Icelandic participants put into words their emotions and experiences of the whole project. These words were read out at the symposium. The resultant installation was interactive; participants could continue the knitting process! I thought it was a wonderfully intricate and intimate way of connecting two cultures in ways that combined the traditional (letter writing, knitting, painting) and the high-tech (Facebook, email).

The final event of Thursday was the opening of the exhibition - here are some photos...

Roxane with artists and visitors to the exhibition opening

 This is a participant listening to the Northern Exchange installation, which included film and recorded interviews. Thanks to Davy and Susan for all the technical wizardry!  

All in all, I learned a great deal from the experience of being involved in helping with the organisation and running of this amazing event. The feedback on Relate North 2016 was overwhelming and positive. Very inspiring!!