Portage: Crossing Points (29 May – 27 June), Bonhoga Gallery, Shetland.

The Shetland Islands are a fitting location for the UK’s first exhibition dedicated solely to digital jewellery and interactive craft. The word Portage means to transport or carrying something. This, then, is Portage both in terms of transporting and exhibiting artwork in a remote island location and exploring creative and intimate forms of 21^st century communication.

The  exhibiting artists’ use new technology, jewellery design and craft  to create imaginative, new dialogues and to explore how people relate to one another both in proximity and over distance.

Many of us have jewellery or objects, given to us or handed down through generations, which contain strong associations, memories, and stories about that person and our relationship with them. Portage: Crossing Points demonstrates how new technology can be used to bring these precious associations to life and to allow people to interact with objects and one another.

Imagine uploading photographs for distant relatives using Fair Isle pin cushions and an interactive ‘kist’ (kist is a Shetland word for a box containing keepsakes) instead of a computer, being part of a group connected by wirelessly networked necklaces, or even, being able to draw on the body of a lover thousands of miles away.

These are some of the concepts behind the work at this innovative exhibition curated by Clair Aldington of Shetland Arts. “Portage: Crossing Points, for me, is about re-presenting technology to explore our relationships with people: friends, family, partners, lovers, or maybe even strangers”, explained Ms. Aldington.

The show includes Mutsugoto, by Distance Lab, an intimate body-drawing communicator for long distant lovers. This work has a particular resonance for remote communities where people are often separated by employment and/or geography. Shetland is also a powerful context for Hazel White and Sarah Kettley’s pieces. Kettley’s touch-triggered Ensemble installation conjures up Shetland sounds, stories and voices whilst Hazel White’s work, Telling Tales: hamefarers kist, connects the Shetland Diaspora to home.

This connection to Diaspora is highlighted by the exhibition coinciding with Shetland‘s ‘Hamefarin’ (homecoming) celebrations during June 2010 when Shetlanders from around the world are welcomed back to their home islands.

A catalogue of the exhibition will be available for sale from Bonhoga Gallery from 29 May 2010 with essays by the artists and William Gaver, Professor of Design, Goldsmiths, University of London.

For further details please go to our Events page.

Shetland Arts’ Creative Connections is a marathon, seven-day and night festival, celebrating the contemporary creative culture of Shetland, incorporating four summer schools, cultural and creative visits across the islands, showcase concerts and dances, a specially curated exhibition and an artist residency.  This event is part of Scotland’s Year of Homecoming and takes place throughout Shetland between 3 – 9 August.

Now into its sixth year, Fiddle Frenzy is Shetland’s renowned fiddle school using top exponents of their craft to teach tunes and techniques drawn from the unique island traditions as heard world wide by our contemporary performers. In addition to the daily workshops held throughout the week in Lerwick, Whalsay and Fetlar, Fiddle Frenzy provides seven days of concerts in Lerwick’s Garrison Theatre, at the Clickimin Centre, in the village of Voe and on the island of Fetlar. This year’s showcase concerts include performances by Aly Bain and Phil Cunningham, Fiddlers Bid, Bryan Gear and Violet Tulloch, Fullscelidh Spelemannslag, Kevin Henderson, the Heritage Fiddlers and many more.

For 2009 there have been additions made to the week long summer school event.  ‘Art Craft Experience’ is based on Shetland’s well known textile culture, grown from our knitting techniques and continuous creative development. During the workshops the tutors will teach basic Shetland knitted structures and their contemporary application for creative textiles.  Afternoon visits will take students to the studios of some of Shetland’s visual artists, craft makers and applied artists, to see their work and share in their experiences of working as an artist in Shetland. Students will visit the Bonhoga Gallery for the ‘Diaspora’ exhibition featuring four Shetland artists who have chosen to live outwith Shetland, and four artists who have made their home in the islands.  An artist in residence with family connections in Shetland, Hazel White, will spend a month at The Booth, an artist living/working space in Scalloway.  She will take part in some of the workshops while developing a project around her work in digital jewellery.

‘Makkin’ Wi Wirds’ is the title of the writing workshops with T.S. Eliot Prize winner, Jen Hadfield, exploring ideas of place through praise poem, myth and music. Shetland has a well respected literature scene, and these workshops will give students the encouragement to realise their ideas and visit some of the dramatic sites that have inspired some very high profile writers, from Robert Louis Stevenson to Will Self. Students will have an opportunity to share their compositions by stepping up to the ‘open mike’ at Creative Connection Club nights.

Another integral part of Creative Connections is ‘Shetland’s Storytelling Festival’, our top storytellers accompany the afternoon cultural trips and provide an insight into the folklore of the islands and the contemporary yarning that still flourishes in day to day Shetland life, act as hosts for the concerts and the festival club and provide that invaluable insight to Shetland past and present.

Clickimin Comedy is a stand up comedy event on Friday 7th at the Clickimin Centre, Lerwick, featuring visiting comedians Michael Redmond, Steven Dick and Eilidh MacAskill together with local comedian Les Sinclair and compère Sandy Nelson. The event is part of Shetland Arts comedy development programme which has so far included events such as Stand Up At Sound and Stand Up Helly Aa.

Creative Connections ‘Festival Club’ at the Garrison Theatre, provides a chance, each evening after the concerts, for all students and visitors to mix and enjoy traditional music and storytelling sessions until the early hours.

Bookings can be make from Shetland Box office 01595 745555 or in person from Islesburgh Community Centre, King Harald Street, Lerwick.

Contact us for more information on Creative Connections.

Shetland Arts is taking part in Homecoming Scotland 2009′s celebrations with Creative Connections Shetland, a programme of summer schools, concerts, events and a residency in August, beginning with the new exhibition, ‘Diaspora’, at Bonhoga Gallery, Weisdale Mill.  The show runs from 1 – 31 August with a preview on 31 July at 7.30pm.  Most of the artists will be attending the preview and an invitation is extended to everyone to come and meet them, perhaps renewing old acquaintances.

Diaspora refers to the movement of any population sharing common ethnic identity forced to leave, or who voluntarily left their settled territory, and became residents in areas often far remote from the former.  Taking this as the title and theme for the show Shetland Arts invited four artists who left Shetland to live elsewhere, and four artists who have settled in Shetland to show their work resulting in an eclectic mix.

Robert Ollason was born in Shetland, and after graduating from Edinburgh College of Art in 1961, and teaching art and design in Edinburgh and Shetland, he followed a lifelong passion for the large animals of Africa and went on to spend five happy and inspired years in Kenya.  On his return to the UK he took up the post of Head of Education at Edinburgh Zoo where, for the next 27 years he continued to be surrounded by exotic animals and to travel extensively in East and Southern Africa, leading wildlife tours.  Robert’s work captures on paper ‘the various kinds of stripes and also the spots, blotches and other markings and textures on certain animals’ coats.’  He continues, ‘I enjoy attempting to express an animal’s form through its pattern’.  A number of his animal studies are included in this exhibition.

Still influenced by the same Nordic, maritime sources today as he was when a student at ECA in the early seventies Alex Malcolmson, who has spent the last 30 years running a very successful gallery based in land-locked Yorkshire, lives far away from the sea which inspires his work.  ‘Indeed at a distance the focus on some kind of island identity seems to make me sharper,’ says the artist whose work, over the past ten years or so, has been creating box constructions made mainly from wood, carved and painted, sometimes incorporating found objects.  His influences include Joseph Cornell, ship dioramas and other marine folk art and for ‘Diaspora’ he has taken folk, naïve and primitive art; the kind of objects made for use and ornament, often by unnamed makers, as the main source of the work.

Another ECA graduate Lillian Tait studied art and design alongside Alex Malcolmson and 15 years ago she left Shetland again to study art therapy.  This has been a major influence on her work and the reason she began to paint again.  ‘I indulge myself; paintings of Jesus in Gethsemane or, as in the case of the angels, painting for the sheet joy of the process.  Or even painting my younger self transported to another country … if I feel so inclined! ‘Lillian believes that her exile has little to do with the style or subject matter of her paintings and that if she ever returned to Shetland she would continue to paint whatever she fancied.  A number of her angel works are included in the exhibition so those who knew Lillian in her youth can decide whether they resemble her ‘younger self’.

The fourth artist to move away is Katherine Laidlay who has lived in Dundee for the past 16 years, and although she sees beauty in the city’s, famous bridges and striking skyline, she has stayed in Dundee for the people.  ‘I still have the same appreciation for those around me, and the importance of friendship still exists, says Katherine.  The characters whom she has known since a student, and more recently through her work in the community, has influenced her and in turn her work which is mainly figurative, sometimes expressing a mood, an emotion, sometimes a visual response to a question or thought.  Her preferred medium is charcoal allowing the exploration of exaggerated contrasts.  In her recent work she has been concentrating on her perception of home which can be taken literally but more and more her realisation is that home is more about sense – a sense of belonging and of comfort.

Shetland based artist, Peter Davis, moved to the isles in 1991 following a decade living in Orkney, so the northern isles influences, its colours, climate and remoteness was already prevalent in his work.  ‘What I found particular to Shetland was a much more elemental landscape, pared down to essentials,’ said Peter who was born in the north east of England at the edge of the sea. ‘The inorganic processes of nature such as crystallization, desiccation, and fluidity are mirrored in the action of a medium like watercolour.  It is one of the most natural of the painting media and one I worked with for more than 30 years.  It is not an easy medium and there are many variables involved in making a watercolour,’ comments the artist whose paintings are contemplative and soothing while drawing the viewer into the depths of their space.

In the summer of 1973 Gail Harvey, a student at Glasgow School of Art, spent her summer in Shetland working in a fish factory and the Queens Hotel, Lerwick.  She often escaped into the Shetland countryside and loved the landscape and the people, reminding her of childhood summers off the west coast of Scotland.  In 1988 Gail returned and is still residing in Shetland and painting its landscape.  Her work which features the islands in all weathers and seasons is much sought after, and she has earned her living as a well respected painter for many years. She says, ‘Twenty one years later my life and painting have gone through changes.  The way I see the landscape is affected by this.  It reveals itself in new ways, and will go on changing with time.’  This exhibition will be rare opportunity for visitors to Bonhoga to see, and buy, work by this successful artist.

Ruth Brownlee’s artist statement quotes ‘My work explores interpretations of the visual drama of Shetland, capturing the changing moods and atmosphere of its seas and coastlines.’  She trained at ECA and moved to Shetland in 1998 to concentrate on painting. She has won many prestigious awards and exhibits extensively throughout the UK and at international art fairs. Ruth has developed a strong and distinctive style that captures Shetland, the play of light and shade over the land and sea and the force of the elements.

The youngest and newest resident artist is Kristi Cumming.  She is actually a retuning Shetlander who left when she was in primary 2 and has returned to live permanently three years ago.  She said that growing up in Shetland, the exposure to vast expanses of sea and sky, have remained lasting influences in the work she produces today. Her paintings are trying to capture the experienced emotions of being surrounded by light, water and iridescent colour. Kristi graduated in 1999 from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee and has exhibited in various solo and group shows throughout Scotland and Spain.  Her vibrant palette captures Shetland’s land, sea and sky in an imaginative and dramatic style.

‘We are delighted to being showing eight such talented artists at Bonhoga as part of the Scottish Homecoming Celebrations,’ said Curator Mary Smith. ‘The work is very diverse and we are sure that many of the gallery visitors will find it interesting to see work by these artists who in some way think of Shetland as home.’

Bonhoga Gallery is open 10.30 – 4.30 pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 4.30pm on Sundays

Please contact us for further information

Images of Diaspora