Art on North Uist
Chris Drury's Hut of Shadows (below)
Ettie Spencer's Metal House (bottom)
An exhibition of Helen
MacAlistair's work at Taigh Chearsabhagh art school
and gallery in Lochmaddy
In the visitor's book, a comment "The Emporer's new
clothes?"
Exhibition throughout lower and upper gallery and
stairs between the two. Painting objects are minimal
and poetic; snippets of titles and quotes from plant
names and Scots and Gelic poetry hang in the centres
of canvases and on round door-knocker frames. Careful
pencilling or painting make texts almost-printed.
Exhibition better than ghastly exhib. in An Lanntair
on Stornoway (very, at best, average paintings and
photographs; architectural muddle and views from
gallery, crafty bits and pieces shop and confusingly
trendy cafe). By contrast (TC exhib) space for
contemplation.
In particular, a large soft brown canvas with words
bruan air bhruan (poetry of Gaelic bard
Sorley MacLean, the sea draining drop by
drop). Words implanted into top right hand
quarter, a reminder of (Scottish-driven) concrete
poetry (Ian Hamilton Finlay, etc); text as physical
object; words suspended in canvas like objects of
their reference in the natural world.
Chris Drury
At Sponish, peninsula n Lochmaddy, a stone
hut, turfed over like an ancient burial chamber. A
camera obscura, projecting and condensing an image of
the complex environment outside onto a personal
viewing screen. Making a landscape. A way of being
with the outside world. A photograph of a moving
image; a film in real time.
Ettie Spencer's Metal House. Sheets of
aluminuim cladding a delapidated crofting house. A
meditation on 'displacement' (?). Movement of people
off the island, leaving behind crofthouses
(memories).
Seeing these things on a
beautiful, brilliantly light calm day. The striking
light of North Uist. Environment again reflected onto
house (landscape). Possible to take photographs,
suspend reality and confuse surface of house with
landscape, sky. House vanishes. People. However,
consciousness of bends in metal, rivets, folds into
windows and around corners. Debris left in house
(abandoned wood and furnishings, litter) and lights
on ground like abandoned hair dryers. I think about
the effort of getting aluminium on and off island.
Evocation of leavings behind, litter. Trails as we go
through life. Shit.
Disposal - displacement - recycling - environment -
food
Climate change, storms, North Uist. Houses on the
edge. Damage. Fragility. Urgency.
Artists. Roles. Working; not only environmental
consciousness but own proceedures and acts
of living and making in a place.