Past Art Exhibition
The Visitors - Anne Brodie | Yael Rosenblut
The Ice House , Helmsdale's monumental deep freeze. Once a store for salmon catch, later a coal fired fish and chip shop. Now the vaulted chamber plays host to the last in a series of three double sited works, marking the end of two years as Timespan's artist in residence and youth arts curator for Ruth Macdougall.
The final response to the Ice House comes fron two very different artists, Chilean video artist Yael Rosenblut and Scottish artist Anne Brodie. Working primarily in digital, lens based media, this intensive one month residency has derived two swift pulls of focal length from both.
Anne's previous life as a salmon farm worker on the West Coast has drawn her informed and intimately observed images and sounds from the little known quarters of Helmsdale's smoke house. Coming from a long line of fishermen, father and son Sandy and Alexander Cowie, represent the current thin layer of Helmsdale's once rich fishing industry.
Contrastingly, Yael on her first visit to Scotland has chosen to engage with one of the most iconic strands of Scotland's traditional imagery, the Highland Dancer. Working with Helmsdale's newest generation of dancers, she has sought to create a collective portrait of youth and future heritage.
Artist Showcase | Tumin and Prendergast
Small Volumes
Small volumes comprises a series of miniature diptychs painted on stretched and primed linen. The right hand panel of each diptych uses oil paint to depict a representational detail or aspect of the artists' studio. The left hand panels are painted with acrylic and are based on post it/ memos or doodles. Both sides of each Small Volumes painting relates in some way to the everyday working lives of Tumin and Prendergast.
Contrast in both style and content are at the heart of these works but they have also been described as "very touching and quite intimate - appealing in their honesty and lack of conceit".
Final Instalments
Final Istalments consists of a series of standard, plain, small sized envelopes on which lead pencil has been used to depict creases and shadows, hand writing, torn paper and stamps. These drawings are trompe l'oeil in style and are intended to be thought provoking, playing with illusion and tricking the eye into believing a shadow is real when in fact everything, apart from the plain, flat white envelope, is actually drawn.
These six pencil drawings in this exhibition represent a strand of the artists' thought process concerned with minutiae of everyday life. Looking hard at things that would normally be thought throwaway, seeing the extraordinary in things that are considered to be ordinary is a characterisitic of Tumin and Prendergast's art practice. In common with Small Volumes there are clues to lives lived and a tenderness given to the lost and discarded.
Designer Showcase | Laura West
Award - winning bookbinder, Laura West runs THE ISLE OF SKYE BINDERY where she specialises exclusively in hand sewn traditional and contemporary books. Albums, display portfolios, spring-back ledgers, visitors' books and wedding books are produced to order along with a selection of smaller books, all hand bound. Here she also crafts her signature range of unique artefact books, the designs of which are accurately founded upon existing historical models. A Queen Elizabeth Scholar (2000) with a first class honours degree in Bookbinding, Laura West is particularly interested in non-adhesive book structures which have a contemporary look and feel and yet are strong and flexible.
Among the books exhibited here are two styles of stationery bindings-blank books which are not and never will be mass marketed. The Coptic range, with their thick cow hide covers are hand sewn with linen thread and filled with hand-made 100% cotton rag paper, with a smooth surface that suits any pen or pencil or even water colours. A newer and still evolving range is the Garbage Collection. Combining offcuts from quality binding materials and papers with recycled items such as fruit boxes and papers inspire greener living.
Laura West can be contacted by telephone, email or via her web site and is happy to advise regarding 'personalised' commisions, such as memory books. She teaches workshops in bookbinding regularly throughout Scotland and at University level across the UK and will be happy to place aspiring binding enthusiasts on her mailing list for upcoming classes.
The Garbage Collection
Each book is designed and hand made using a combination of quality bookbinding offcuts (of leather and fine paper) and 'rescued rubbish' such as fruit boxes, packaging, and fruit papers. The resulting books are unique and amusing with their bright colours yet function well too. They are constructed using the same bookbinding techniques and skills used in more 'traditional' bindings.