- Exhibition, curated by Susan Brind and Mónica Laiseca, runs from 24 July to 29 August 2021
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Distant Views of the Land. Film still © Saoirse Higgins |
Angle of Vision is an exhibition of new work by Saoirse Higgins, an artist based in
Papa Westray, Orkney, addressing contemporary island life will open at Pier Arts Centre, Stromness on 24 July 2021. The show runs until 29 August.
In the summer of
2019, Higgins undertook a placement as Embedded
Artist with Scottish Government, joining a consultation team that visited
40 of Scotland’s 96 inhabited islands – from Shetland to the Outer Hebrides. The
team’s role was to gather the views of islanders in order to develop Scotland’s
first National Islands Plan (NIP). This exhibition showcases commissioned work by
Higgins resulting from this experience, where
she was invited to respond to the consultation process from a different angle,
as an artist. The
NIP Embedded Artist placement and exhibition have been co-curated by Susan
Brind and Mónica Laiseca (from The Glasgow School of Art).
Taking its title from a poem by Orcadian poet Robert Rendall (1898–1967),
the exhibition focuses on the interactions between islanders and those arriving
from the mainland by tracing the oscillating movement between two island
viewpoints: one looking out from the island edge to sea – the islanders’
horizon; and the other looking in from the sea to the island – the ship’s eye
view of the edge of the island, which islanders look out for on their journey
home, or when taking themselves out to sea.
Mairi Gougeon, Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and
Islands commented “It’s exciting to see a
creative spin put on to the work of our National Island Plan and get a chance
to see it from a different perspective. I’m absolutely amazed by this
exhibition and I want to thank Saoirse Higgins for the work that she has put
into it.”
Higgins’ investigations of the sea to island viewpoint are influenced by
a series of maps developed by 18th century hydrographer Murdoch
Mackenzie, on view as part of the exhibition. Mackenzie mapped Orkney, the
Hebrides and Ireland, making the land the anchor point for the sea to make his
maps. Higgins’ Angle of Vision – Map of the Geographical Centre Point of 93 inhabited
Scottish Islands, is a special map
developed in collaboration with cartographic design consultant Paul Naylor and
technical consultant Chris Mee at Ordnance Survey. This map shows the Scottish
islands visited by the National Islands Plan consultation team with lines
linking the calculated centre of each island to their collective geographic
centre. The mainland territories are absent in this map, emphasizing an
island-centred viewpoint which destabilizes dominant notions of centre and
periphery. The map is accompanied by a specially designed Island Centre Marker Buoy with
the mathematical formula that was used to calculate the island geographical centre
points printed on its body.
Saoirse Higgins explained “I
travelled as peripatetic island explorer around diverse Scottish island nations
from my initial starting point on Papa Westray…taking off on the 8-seater
Loganair plane towards Shetland then onwards to the Hebrides and back around to
Orkney. This exhibition in the Pier Arts Centre completes a perfect aerial loop
exhibiting work generated on islands about islands and islanders amongst the
legacy of the great Orkney artist Margaret Tait and Orkney cartographer Murdoch
Mackenzie with a commitment in their work to the act of looking.”
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Angle of Vision – Map of the Geographical Centre Point of 93 inhabited Scottish Islands
Scottish Government National Islands Plan, Consultation expedition, summer 2019.
Map made in collaboration with Ordnance Survey.
© Saoirse Higgins and Ordnance Survey 2019.
The abstracted, geospatial information contained in the maps gives way
to an embodied understanding of place in Higgins’ film Distant Views of the Land,
adopting a land to sea view. The film was shot on the island of Papa Westray
(also known as Papay) in Orkney, where she lives, on its most Northern point –
called Fowl Flag. The film shows a view out to sea from the land with Higgins
standing right beside the viewer, who is invited to join her in a moment of
contemplation and survey the landscape together. Many islanders interviewed by
the artist in Papay spoke to her of their close connection with the sea and how
the island boundedness by the ocean frames how they experience themselves in
the landscape. The film’s audio track is of the sea around Papay, with 16-year
old islander Jessie Dodman reading a text excerpt from Murdoch Mackenzie’s 1774
Treatise on Maritime Surveying. Our
attention is drawn here to the young generation, whose ideas and energy are
core to the survival of islands, providing hope for the future.
· The Pier Arts Centre’s entire collection is a
to an embodied understanding of place in Higgins’ film Distant Views of the Land,
adopting a land to sea view. The film was shot on the island of Papa Westray
(also known as Papay) in Orkney, where she lives, on its most Northern point –
called Fowl Flag. The film shows a view out to sea from the land with Higgins
standing right beside the viewer, who is invited to join her in a moment of
contemplation and survey the landscape together. Many islanders interviewed by
the artist in Papay spoke to her of their close connection with the sea and how
the island boundedness by the ocean frames how they experience themselves in
the landscape. The film’s audio track is of the sea around Papay, with 16-year
old islander Jessie Dodman reading a text excerpt from Murdoch Mackenzie’s 1774
Treatise on Maritime Surveying. Our
attention is drawn here to the young generation, whose ideas and energy are
core to the survival of islands, providing hope for the future.
Both close and distant, these multi-faceted views of land, sea and island life, capture
moments of alive, complex and caring occupancy of islands by different
generations of islanders and visitors. Higgins’ works draw us into a lived,
embodied experience of island life, imbued with geopolitical realities and a
pressing sense of both urgency and optimism in looking to the future.
Susan Brind and Mónica Laiseca, Curators, added “With a passion for the environment and an engagement with technology
and cartography, Saoirse Higgins navigates a creative route through the
complicated and dynamic relationships between islands and mainland, nature and
culture, as well as local and global issues. She was keen to observe part of
the National Islands Plan consultation process first hand and use her creative
skills to reflect on the more subtle experiences of island living not so
readily or easily named and quantified yet that remain of fundamental
importance to islanders. The rich body of work that she is presenting draws
from her own environmental consciousness while calling attention to what can be
learnt from islanders’ connection to their land.”
Showing concurrently
at the Pier Arts Centre is a related body of work by
Saoirse Higgins titled Pap-Øy-cene, which reveals the relationships between her role as artist-researcher,
the island of Papay, Papay islanders, and the global anthropocene. The work for Pap-Øy-cene was developed over a four-year
period, living and working on Papa Westray.
Ends
Lesley Booth
07799414474
press@gsa.ac.uk
@GSofAMedia
Notes for Editors
Image credits:
Distant Views of the Land. Film still © Saoirse Higgins
2019
Angle of Vision – Map of the Geographical Centre Point of 93 inhabited
Scottish Islands
Scottish Government
National Islands Plan, Consultation expedition, summer 2019.
Map made in
collaboration with Ordnance Survey.
© Saoirse Higgins and Ordnance Survey 2019.
About the artist:
Saoirse Higgins is an artist and designer from Dublin, Ireland, living and working in
Papa Westray, Orkney. She is interested in revealing some of the connections
between our vision of the world we live in, our expectations for the future and
the technology we use to help us with this. She explores the contested spaces
of the Anthropocene – human-machine, human-nature. Her work is process-driven
and she often collaborates with other experts and communities.
Saoirse has shown work at the
Thessaloniki Biennale; Science Gallery, Dublin; Montreal Film and Media
festival; Transmediale, Berlin; Siggraph, New Orleans; Exit Art and Location
One gallery, New York. She has held residences at SIM, Iceland, Swatch Peace
Art Hotel, Shanghai, e-Mobilart Lab, Disonancias in Spain, Location1 gallery in
New York and the Banff Centre for the Arts. She is also cofounder of the ØY
island festival exploring islands, art and culture.
Credits:
All
the works in Angle of Vision have been developed by Saoirse
Higgins following her placement in 2019 as National
Islands Plan (NIP) Embedded Artist, funded by Scottish Government. The NIP consultation process took place between April – July 2019.
Notes:
About
Pier Arts Centre:
· Pier Arts Centre receives Regular
Funding from Creative Scotland. This
supports the organisation to play an important role within the visual arts in
Orkney, hosting a programme of local, national and international exhibitions
and events, providing more people with the opportunity to engage with art of
the highest quality.
· The Pier Arts Centre’s entire collection is a
Recognised Collection of National Significance to Scotland
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