Portage: Finger Symbols, an exhibition exploring rings and finger ornaments, curated by Mary Smith can be seen at Bonhoga Gallery, Weisdale, Shetland from 7 August to 5 September.  The exhibition shows contemporary work created by emerging and established international makers and also features photography by Chloe Garrick and a film by Jono Sandilands.  The film can also be viewed online after 6 August 2010 and will be Shetland Arts’ first online exhibition.

The exhibition opening is at 7.30pm on 6 August and an invitation is extended to all to come along.

A DVD catalogue of the work by over 50 makers, essays and the innovative film of the jewellery will be available from Bonhoga Gallery.  This format was thought to be particularly appropriate for the theme of Portage – a considerable amount of information contained within a small object.

To accompany the exhibition there will be two workshops by Glasgow based jeweller Alison Macleod.  A ring workshop entitled Binding Memories will be held on 14 August and a Laminating workshop using laminated papers to create necklaces, bracelets, rings, etc will take place on 15 August.  Both will be held in the Learning Room at Shetland Museum and Archives and bookings can be made by contacting Shetland Box Office on 01595745555.  Alison will give a presentation and talk about her work in Bonhoga Gallery at 7pm on 17 August.  This event is free and an invitation is extended to all.

More information –  Alison Macleod Workshops

Also appearing will be film critic, Mark Kermode, who with Linda Ruth Williams will curate Screenplay, the film festival which will be based in the Garrison Theatre and will run from Tuesday, August 31^st through to Sunday 5^th September and will feature actor Jason Isaacs and a wide variety of films, including work by local film makers. Further information about both festivals will be published in due course.

Wordplay – More information and full programme

Screenplay – More information and full programme

All the films will be introduced by festival director Lizzie Bisschoff, who will also give an introductory talk on the Friday evening. In addition, Lizzie Bisschoff will conduct a Q and A session at the end of Bamako on Saturday evening.

Films to be screened in Lerwick include the documentary Like A Man on Earth, made by a young man who fled Ethiopia to escape violent political repression, showing the tremendous struggles and suffering borne by refugees; Tilai (The Law) made by the acclaimed African director Idrissa Ouedraogo, which is the story of an illicit love affair and its consequences for a small village in Burkina Faso, and Bamako, an offbeat, satirical comedy written and directed by Abderrahmane Sissako, in which the director imagines how it would be if Western powers were forced to answer for the damage they have done in the Third World; in the courtyard of a shared house in a village in Mali, African civil society spokesmen decide to take proceedings against the World Bank and the IMF, whilst all around them, village life goes on.

There will also be a free programme of short, animated films for children and young people on Saturday, to which adults are also welcome!

Stuart Hubbard from Shetland Film Club said that the club was delighted to be able to assist in bringing African film to a wider audience. “As part of our outreach partnership work with Shetland Arts, we feel this is a perfect opportunity to celebrate the film makers of Africa, who rarely make it to the screen in the UK.” This leg of the festival has also been supported by Unison (Health Branch) and Shetland Amnesty International Group. The Film Club outreach work is funded by Shetland Arts, the Shetland Charitable Trust’s Arts Fund and by the Co-op Community Fund.

Tickets will be on sale from the Shetland Box office at Islesburgh from Monday 2nd November onwards, tel. 01595 745555. For those over 15 years old there is a festival ticket costing £10 (£7 concessions) which will get you in to all screenings and talks. Otherwise, individual tickets cost £4 (£3 concessions) and the young people’s animation session is free.

For further information contact Kathy Hubbard at Shetland Arts on 01595 743843 or e-mail kathy.hubbard@shetlandarts.org or Stuart Hubbard at Shetland Film Club on 01950 477235, e-mail skhubbard@btinternet.com.

Mark Kermode heads for the UK’s most northerly bus shelter before welcoming Terence Davies to the Shetland Film Festival

Shetland young filmmakers group Maddrim Media will welcome film critic Mark Kermode (and his mum) to be guests of honour to the UK’s smallest film festival screening in the UK’s most northerly bus Shelter this Thursday. Complete with tickets, ushers, popcorn and ice-cream. Maddrim will be showing Mark some of the films they have made for Screenplay ’09, Shetland’s third annual film festival. The venue, Bobby’s Bus Shelter, virtually at the UK’s most northerly point, is something of a Shetland institution. Some ten years ago a wicker sofa and table appeared in the shelter, with no-one claiming responsibility. Soon afterwards a small TV was added, followed by a ‘hot snacks’ counter; since then, the tiny bus shelter has had curtains, a computer, hamsters, fairy lights, paintings, reading materials and much more installed, all secretly, and much to the delight of anyone who has to wait for the school bus there on a wet morning – http://tinyurl.com/m5cf32

Shetland Arts’ third film festival, Screenplay 09, got off to a flying start on Fair Isle last weekend (29/30 Aug) with enthusiastic audiences enjoying a varied programme of films. The festival moves on to Whalsay, Aith, Yell and Unst during the week, including a very special screening at Bobby’s Bus Shelter in Baltasound.

This year Screenplay 09 has two strands – the first being on a theme of ‘Compass Points’, where the films have a connection with north, south, east or west either in their titles, their content or the countries in which they were made. So, the audience will be going north to Iceland with Heima, with a free screening of Sigur Ros’ impromptu series of concerts across Iceland in 2006; south with Sir Edward Shackleton and the crew of the ‘Endurance’, with Frank Hurley’s original 1916 documentary footage; east with Howl’s Moving Castle and the extraordinary Waltz With Bashir; and west to Skye with Seachd and The Inheritance, to name but a few.

The north of England features largely in the festival’s second strand, the works of acclaimed director Terence Davies. Arts Development Manager Kathy Hubbard said “We are honoured to have one of Britain’s greatest living film-makers, Terence Davies, visiting the festival this year to talk about his films. Of Time and the City, his most recent film, has gathered enormous critical acclaim worldwide, and will close the festival on the Sunday evening”.

Other film professionals coming to Screenplay include Simon Miller and Joanne Cockwell (the director and screenplay writer of Seachd, the first Gaelic film to achieve national release), TV producers Foz Allan and Matthew Read, writer/producer Tim Barrow and Anne Mensah, who is responsible for commissioning drama UK wide for the BBC.

Screenplay will promote all sorts of moving image: archive material, movie classics such as East of Eden with James Dean, late night features, works by independent filmmakers, animation for all age groups (including some excellent short films from the National Film Board of Canada), music video and feature film, plus the regular audience favourite – an evening of new short films made in Shetland. There will also be a television strand, with a screening of an episode of the BBC’s Robin Hood directed by Douglas Mackinnon, followed by a panel discussion including Mark Greig (writer of Ashes to Ashes, The Bill, Life on Mars and Taggart) on adapting work for TV, which should be of great interest to anyone considering writing or working in television.

The second strand is a ‘Compass Points’ theme running through the rest of the programme, going north to Iceland with a free late night screening of Sigur Ros’ Heima, south with South (the 1919 actual documentary footage of Shackleton’s expedition to the South Atlantic, east with a James Dean classic East of Eden, and west to Skye for Seachd: the Inaccessible Pinnacle, the first Gaelic film to achieve international release. As an added treat, the film’s director (Simon Miller) and screenplay writer (Jo Cockwell) will be visiting the festival to talk about their work.

Further forays into the east are represented by the fabulous Japanese animation, Howl’s Moving Castle, and the extraordinary animated story of one Israeli’s memories of a massacre in the Lebanon, Waltz with Bashir.

There will be screenings at various ‘compass points’ around Shetland – Fair Isle, Baltasound, Whalsay and Aith – but I’ll tell you about those (and about our plans for promoting Shetland’s own home made product) in another posting.

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to welcoming back our curators Mark Kermode and Linda Ruth Williams. Apart from being utterly passionate about cinema (and extremely knowledgable), they are generous with their time and great fun to be with.

Come and see all of it, film lovers - and discover what a mole feels like when it emerges, blinking into the sunlight after a prolonged spell in the dark. And they don’t even get to see the movies.

If you’d like to have a bash of Pro Tools 8 give us a phone on 01595 743 843 and book a session in the studio.

(If you don’t already know, we have a peerie studio at our Toll Clock office which is free for public use. It’s based on an Apple Mac with dual monitors and has multimedia software installed such as Final Cut Pro, Cubase, Pro Tools, Photoshop and Dreamweaver)

Digidesign – manufacturer’s website

7th August to 5th September, Bonhoga Gallery, Weisdale Mill. Exhibition celebrating finger adornment with workshops (14th and 15th August) and artist talk (17th August) by Alison Macleod. Visit this page for detailed information.  Visit this page for photographs of the exhibition

More Light – Shetland Youth Theatre

Thursday 26th to Sunday 29th August 2010. Former Shore Station, Ness of Sound, Lerwick. Outdoor drama production. See More Light Post for detailed information

ScreenPlay

Thursday 2nd to Sunday 5th September 2010. Various venues. Film Festival. See ScreenPlay page for detailed information

WordPlay

Saturday 4th and Sunday 5th September 2010. Various venues. Literature Festival. See WordPlay page for detailed information

Guitar Festival

Friday 17th to Monday 20th September 2010, various venues. Venues TBC. See the Guitar Festival page for more info

Showaddywaddy – Rescheduled

Saturday 2nd October, 7.30pm, Clickimin Centre, Lerwick. For the celebrations of Clickimin Leisure Centre, Shetland Arts are proud to be recreating the venue’s first ever gig back in 1985 in 2010 – Showaddywaddy with original support band No Sweat. Tickets £18.50/£17 from Shetland Box Office, 01595 745555.

Tickets

Tickets for events can be purchased over the phone from Shetland Box Office ph 01595 745555, or in person at Islesburgh Community Centre, King Harald Street. View Shetland Box Office page.

Gift Vouchers

We now offer a ‘Hansel for Shetland Arts’ Gift Voucher which can be used for any Shetland Arts’ event, film or purchase at Bonhoga Gallery. For more information, or to purchase a ‘Hansel’, please contact Shetland Arts office 01595 743843 or Bonhoga Gallery 01595 745750.

For previous events: What’s On: Previous Events

An Exhibition by the prizewinners of the Shetland Open Art Exhibition 2008

To accompany the prizes awarded by the five sponsors of last year’s Open Exhibition, Shetland Arts awarded a further £100 to each prize-winner, to fund the preparation of work for a joint exhibition in the gallery.

Helen Whitham won Baker Tilly’s prize for the best newcomer, June Redman won Vaila Fine Arts’ award for the best painting, Ivan Hawick was the successful photography winner for the prize donated by Millgaet Media and Mandy Tait won the John Goudie prize for best print.  Shetland Arts and Crafts gave the prize for best craft piece and this was won by Jenny Deschenes.

All the work in the exhibition is for sale and this is an opportunity for visitors to Bonhoga to purchase work by five Shetland artists each with their own distinctive style.

Running concurrently with the exhibition is T-Skirts, showing in the stairwell projection space. It is an exhibition by school pupils from Dunrossness, Cunningsburgh, Lunnasting and Skerries, aged between 5 and 12, in response to Alison Willoughby’s Skirt exhibition at Bonhoga in January 2009. This is part of the Bonhoga Education Programme.

The Bonhoga Gallery Education Programme aims to develop a partnership between the Bonhoga Gallery and schools across Shetland. It covers many cross-curricular themes and provides stimulating and creative ways to encourage involvement and understanding of the arts. A school visit to the gallery is followed by a workshop delivered by one of a team of artists and writers working around the theme of that exhibition.

The pupils studied the shapes, colours, materials, and textures of the skirts which they had seen in the exhibition.  They also studied the work of other artists and were then encouraged to think of themselves as artists/fashion designers. They then designed and made their own ‘T-Skirts’.

This film is a selection of snippets of interviews in which pupils describe their experiences of T-Skirts and was recorded by the pupils themselves. Also displayed are a selection of the t-shirts that were created throughout the project.

view more photos of T-Skirts

Many thanks to Niela Nell and Fiona Burr for all their hard work.

Both shows run until 21 June 2009

The Board of Shetland Arts Development Agency has today announced that construction on Shetland’s new Music, Cinema and Education venue will start in a matter of weeks.

The announcement follows the conclusion of a range of minor land acquisition issues and the signing of the contract with DITT Construction Ltd to build Mareel.

Shetland Arts is also pleased to announce the appointment of Ewan Balfour of H James Nisbet, Lerwick as the new Project Manager acting on behalf of Shetland Arts to see the project through this final crucial stage.

Gwilym Gibbons, Director of Shetland Arts said: “I and the Mareel Project Board are delighted that building can now begin on Mareel. It has been a long journey with many twists, turns and hurdles. There will be more, but it feels like we are now very much on the home straight. I believe that our local team in form of Ewan Balfour, DITT Construction Ltd, Peter Johnson Partnership through their collaboration with Gareth Hoskins Architects and David Adamson and Partners are all ideally placed to ensure this next and final phase runs as smoothly as possible”.

Shetland Arts plans to hold a small celebration on Mareel site in May to mark the beginning of this final phase of the project. Further details will follow in coming weeks.