In 1996, we travelled by aeroplane to the Pier Arts Centre in Stromness, Orkney. You were asked to write about the new exhibition of Sol LeWitt wall drawings being presented there. I went with you, as I had never been there before. Some years earlier you had already experienced what I was about to. We stayed in the arts centre’s upstairs flat, so we would sleep in the same building as the artwork.
Finding ourselves in the arts centre with the doors closed, we went wandering in our pyjamas through the rooms, experiencing the works in the collection of Alfred Wallis and Ben Nicholson on our own, out of hours. This was an exciting sensation, as though we were breaking some sort of rules about how we might experience and see these artworks. The next morning, we met up with the Pier’s staff. They were a knowledgeable and community spirited bunch. Not only did they curate and manage the arts centre, they were also voluntary fireman, as we found out when they were called out while we were all enjoying a pub-crawl during the Stromness shopping week. You wrote the article on the Sol LeWitt works and it was published in Flash Art. We had a life enhancing experience; they got their International review.
In the summer of 2014 we went back. Staying in a rented house on the main Stromness street. This street seems unique in Scotland. It is a street from a small Italian town, transplanted to the Northern Scottish Isles. It has paving stones and winding sections, occasionally opening up into small squares. The street runs from the harbour, past the Hotel, museum and George Mackay Brown’s garden to the camping and caravan park at the end of the bay. While out walking we meet the Pier staff again. We are all older but nothing much has changed. We are off talking about art and artists, and who’s doing what. They have a new exhibition by Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich on right now, and in fact there is a live performance by the artists at 1.00pm today. Good timing. You have written about their work before so it’s familiar to us. The show is a small survey of their work together – the inflatable mountains, the community performance films, the dinner party for eccentrics and the board game produced with local school pupils. We wanted to see the live performance so back along the main street we went, back to the Pier Arts Centre.
Coming back here makes us feel connected to our past and present. The arts centre has evolved, it was redeveloped and extended in 2007, funded by National Lottery money and redesigned by the prize winning Reiach and Hall architects to become an impressive, cool but vital arts space (Pier Arts Centre 2015) The arts centre could be an exhibition space from the suburbs of the same town in Italy as the main street. But it is here in Scotland. It still has the original collection but now also has extended and multiple white spaces for temporary shows, project rooms, a library and resource room and new spaces for a new collection being curated and built by the staff. There are artworks by Jim Lambie, Callum Innes, Camilla Løw, Douglas Gordon, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Anish Kapoor, Martin Boyce and Eva Rothschild. The Rothschild is a beautiful sculptural web – part Barbara Hepworth, part space station puzzle conundrum, sitting in a large window space overlooking the harbour. What a thing to see from the MV Hamnavoe. We talk with the staff before we leave, about keeping in touch and working together again, of course, if there is still time.
Ref.
Pier Arts Centre, 2015. History of the Buildings [online]. Victoria Street Stromness, Orkney, UK: Pier Arts Centre. Available from: http://www.pierartscentre.com/buildings
Iain Irving, 2014-16
Iain Irving 