Dark Days of Summer

Ceann-á-Ghuibhsaich - The Head of the Pinewood

2011-10-21T09:13:00.001+01:00

“In your 40s, it’s like starting over again but you’re not young any more. You feel like something is rebooting. You’re aware of time passing in a way that is much more profound than you ever thought it would be... It’s the idea of being alone in your life, trying to figure it all out. This is the life we have. Are we really doing what we want with it?” *

* Philip Seymour Hoffman, interviewed in Scotland on Sunday 25/10/11

Royal Scottish Academy

2011-04-29T12:08:00.007+01:00

RSA 185th Annual Exhibition

Royal Scottish Academy
30 April - 8 June 2011

The north-west Highlands, in particular the coastline about Cape Wrath, have been important for Iain Stewart, since his ‘LAND’S END/CAPE WRATH’ project of 2005. Stewart’s work presents an emotive and personal response to the place, drawing inspiration from music, the Romantic landscape tradition and the minimalist approach of the colourfield painters.

The pieces on show mark out a progression. Earlier lushly coloured seascapes move into life in the sun-washed dawn of ‘Orcadia’, a stunning 63 minute film. The 2006 photographic piece ‘Omen’ expresses a pivotal moment of sadness, as light and colour drop out of the world; a premonition of nightmares to come; the black void of a flooded cave in the 2009 film ‘Nightswimming’. In Iain Stewart’s own words: “… light and colour have at times given way to shadow and lost bearings; if I count the days, there has been more rain than sun.” Both of the video pieces are enriched by the work of sound artist Keith Berry, whose subtle accompanying audio brings further resonance to the work.

The group of work concludes with Stewart’s 2010 series, ‘Bothy’, which finds shelter from the weather and a human warmth in the remote Highland bothies. The landscape and colour begin to re-emerge from winter, framed by the man-made windows. The one constant in this flux of emotion and elements is the glory of the Scottish wilderness; in the open space there is respite and solace, and a reminder to live; memento vivere.

Iain Stewart’s work is internationally exhibited and collected, including exhibitions at The Photographers’ Gallery in London, the International Center for Photography, New York, The Museum of Fine Art, San Diego and Jackson Fine Arts, Atlanta. Collections include The National Galleries of Scotland, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark, The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, Arizona and The Lannan Foundation, New Mexico. He is represented in the USA by Julie Saul Gallery in New York, and G Gibson Gallery in Seattle, Washington.

Upper & Lower Galleries

Royal Scottish Academy
The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL

Monday to Saturday 10am – 5pm
Sunday 12noon – 5pm

www.royalscottishacademy.org

Collections

2011-04-15T03:03:00.010+01:00

Recent Additions

First Light 2005
(The University of St Andrews collection)

Being represented in National and International collections is a great acolade to an artist and also of course an opportunity to show work to a wide audience. Iain's work is part of many National Museum collections in the United Kingdom including the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Birmingham City Museum & Art Gallery and the Collection of the Scottish Government, and he has had recent pieces including 'Erribol' (2009) and 'Chamber #66' (2007) join the National Galleries of Scotland collection in 2010. Notable private UK collectors of Iain's work include Sir Elton John and The Pet Shop Boys.

Most recently, Iain was privileged in 2011 to have several pieces purchased for the special collection at The University of St Andrews, including 'Outlands' and 'First Light' from his 2005 LAND'S END/CAPE WRATH project, along with work from his 2007 series DARKEDEN.

Sounding i, 2000
(Collection of Sir Elton John)

Further afield, land and seascape work by Iain is already in collections from Museet for Fotokunst, Odense, Denmark to The Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, as well as The Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, The Lannan Foundation in New Mexico and The University of Texas who hold work at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.

In 2011, Iain was delighted to have four of his pieces, including the diptych 'Part', join the collection of The Henry Gallery at The University of Washington, Seattle.

part (diptych) 1997
collection of The Henry Gallery, The University of Washington

A new dawn

2011-01-13T15:20:00.004Z

...a new decade. Good wishes.

Evening Tune

2010-12-20T17:45:00.011Z

It's the right evening for a tune.

A new tune

one part expectation, two parts sadness

and, for the rest

just the great delight of walking alone

and liking it.

words by Tove Jansson

White Room sketches

2010-12-05T21:37:00.003Z

Work in progress Winter 2010

Monochrome Set

2010-11-30T20:15:00.003Z

The White Album

2010-11-28T18:47:00.005Z

Snowlines

2010-11-26T12:30:00.000Z

Series from 2009

Stephen

2010-11-11T17:27:00.001Z

Erradale, elegy for an empty croft

2010-11-11T17:19:00.007Z

Leviathan

2010-10-21T14:22:00.000+01:00

for Edwyn

Edge

Cauldron

Reel & Stall

Haven

Fall, Wester Ross

2010-10-17T11:11:00.000+01:00

Memento vivere

2010-10-12T10:16:00.016+01:00

Shieldaig

Curlew

Ash & Juniper

Alder & Rowan

sough¹

(intr) (esp of the wind) to make a characteristic sighing sound

n a soft continuous murmuring sound

[Old English swōgan to resound; related to Gothic gaswogjan to groan, Lithuanian svageti to sound, Latin vāgīre to lament]

Orcadian Dawn

2009-10-28T09:50:00.005Z

58º North 2006 // digital video/24min
Orcadia 2007 // digital video/43min

Dawn breaks on an achingly beautiful, clear spring morning looking North over the Atlantic to the Orkneys. Rainclouds clear. The sky colours itself like a celestial canvas, as the sun slowly rises and a new day starts. Orcadia is the second collaboration between Scottish Landscape artist Iain Stewart and London based sound artist Keith Berry, following 58º North in 2006.

Both films were made in the remote Scottish Highlands near Cape Wrath in the Northern Highlands. Inaccessible by road, and only by boat once the winter gales have died down, 'The Cape' is journey's end for the dedicated traveller alone. Of the two films, 58º North is the more "formally" structured, running in three sections, the middle part finding focus through rolling grey clouds to face the void from the depths of a rain drenched cavern. Orcadia is gentler and more lyrical. It's simplicity of structure echoes Stewart's earlier abstract dawn/dusk landscape work, 'From the Morning' (1995).

Like much of Stewart's earlier work , the films position the viewer at the doorway to some vast timeless, space - '...images of ‘not-here,’ resonant with ‘elsewhere,’ the possibility and the promise of passage. They point towards the journey’s end without designating it, without characterising it or giving it a name. They are invitations to a journey, not to arrival. Stewart’s Seascape works often represent thresholds ... as in certain meditation practices ... we are situated in emptiness, looking over emptiness, towards emptiness ... ‘ *

The sparseness and stark beauty of Berry's accompanying audio pieces for 58º North (24:21) bring rich new layers and textures to the narrative of the visuals. For Orcadia, Berry sensitively sourced then gently deconstructed the work of Spencer Grady to make the delicately evocative pairing Left At The Sun (21:07) and Right At The Moon (21:50). The marriage of visuals and sound is perfect.

'Keith Berry's minimalist sound sculptures form the perfect accompaniment to these visual paeans to natural beauty, barely moving and yet full of textural richness and complexity that is to be found within these stunning images. His music, reminiscent of Thomas Koner's glacial drifts and Steve Roden's tidal figurations, is so evocative and cinematic, it lends itself perfectly to the film. The muffled rumbles constitute their own auditory weather system that, when taken in tandem with Stewart's visuals, create still further images, metaphors and avenues of thought. ' **

Both pieces end, with deliberate ambiguity, as the sun rises, echoing an oft occurring motif in Stewart's work. Once more the viewer is left captivated - though perhaps with more questions than answers.

* from “Footsteps to Infinity; On Iain Stewart” extract from land/sea/sky © Iain Tromp 2004

** from '58º North' Iain Stewart/Keith Berry, Wire Magazine, January 2007

The walk in

2009-10-27T10:16:00.012Z

“I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.” †

The Scottish landscape has steadily become a familiar, dominant metaphor within Iain Stewart's landscape work; formidable, harsh - unforgiving even - but at the same time offering beauty and solace, encouraging contemplation, self-evaluation. His 2009 project, BOTHY, continues and develops on this obsessive love affair with the land of his forebears.

In 2004, Stewart visited the Highlands for his LAND’S END/CAPE WRATH project, so beginning his re-appraisal of the North as a rich and productive environment in which to make work. Since then he has regularly returned, finding the light, the space and environment a source of great inspiration. As has been documented elsewhere, personal events around this time seemed to conspire to push Stewart to increasingly remote locations. The pilgrimages to Sutherland became more regular, and although he describes himself as 'not a natural walker', these trips began to involve increasing amounts of walking and wild camping. Stewart began visiting and staying in bothies in early 2009, drawing inspiration from the solace and contemplation these spaces encourage.

True Sanctuaries in the Wild, these deserted crofts are rare modern examples of altruism, left unlocked by the landowner to offer shelter for the night to walkers or lovers of wild places who find themselves out on the hills in need of a place to sleep. These spartan but-and-bens speak powerfully too of Scotland’s history, of the Highland Clearances, and the work responds to the ingrained melancholy of these lonely, abandoned homes, the empty space echoing an emptied landscape.

Today the rough, inaccessible locations attract the loner; indeed, the reasons this hard environment continue ache and pull Stewart back are not unique, finding space to meditate on the eternal spiritual strength and enlightenment that may be drawn from harmonious commune with the landscape, and translate this into a readable, engaging body of work. The liberation of walking, working and sleeping rough in the Highlands is deeply ingrained in this project; whilst the subject matter may appear humble, it's ambition is honest and universal; to look out from within.

Through steeping himself in these quiet, evocative spaces, Stewart's ‘BOTHY’ project has steadily evolved, drawing on familiar elements in his work but developing and combining these with new working practices and a more open approach. Formal compositional decisions are made by the location of the window; the viewpoint is fixed, almost in the manner of automatic drawing; the ever-changing palette is driven by the light, climate, and the hour. The 'BOTHY' photographs offer a view to the 'beyond' of the exterior landscape, and acknowledges our interior placing and observation of the world outside by playing with the idea of the three planes of depth and meaning - interior/window/exterior echoing past/present/future.

As with earlier landscape work, familiar painterly inspiration is drawn from Abstract Expressionist or Romantic painters; Rothko, Turner, Freidrich can all be faintly traced. Other useful touchstones can be found in the writings of Robert MacFarlane ('The Wild Places', ‘Mountains of the Mind’) and Kathleen Jamie (‘Findings’); or in George Orwell’s' work in the 1940's on the Isle of Jura, where he wrote '1984' (originally titled 'The Last Man in Europe'), enduring the bleak conditions and isolation of his Barnhill cottage, and the metaphysical 'windows' to other worlds in the stunningly evocative writing of Phillip Pullmans' Dark Materials.

Perhaps the strongest single connection, though are the quietly evocative words of Edwin Muir, and his meditations on the eternal spiritual strength and enlightenment that may be drawn from our harmonious commune with the landscape.

Rich Haven, Autumn 2009

† John Muir, 1913, in L.M. Wolfe, ed., John Muir, John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir, 1938.

Muir (21 April 1838 – 24 December 1914) was a Scottish-born American naturalist, author, and early advocate of preservation of U.S. wilderness. His writings and philosophy strongly influenced the formation of the modern environmental movement.

nightswimmer // Iain Stewart & Keith Berry

2009-09-18T16:13:00.005+01:00

Nightswimmer Iain Stewart
Turn Right a Thousand Feet From Here Keith Berry

2009 // 17 mins

A short 3 minute extract from 2009 Iain Stewart & Keith Berry collaboration.

www.twoinchesofftheground.com

To Go On, First Go Back

2009-09-09T10:45:00.007+01:00

to go on, first go back; A Journey to Beyond

The background to Iain Stewart’s DARKEDEN

by Dr. John Green

‘In my dreams now, I see him, carrying his burden, too much for a child…’[i]

In many ways, Iain Stewart’s recent work sees a return to a deeply personal and emotive approach not immediately apparent in his work since his earlier projects of the 1990s. In so many ways, the emotional turmoil that forms the background to DARKEDEN (2008) calls to mind the semi-abstract Polaroids and short texts of UNFINISHED DIALOGUE (1992) or the scattered notes and discreet imagery of VOICES IN A SMALL ROOM (1991); both these early projects were also born from periods of emotional distress, albeit Stewart now finding a more sophisticated – and consistently darker – vocabulary to mine deeply personal territories. These formative pieces carried the viewer, with touching sensitivity and directness, through the raw tumble of emotions associated with close personal bereavement; anger, confusion, pain - and ultimately some sense of acceptance, eloquently articulating private concerns to the wider audience; short poetic text gently playing alongside what was later to become his familiar, subtly shifting triptych format, conjuring a whisper of universal narrative.

These projects saw Stewart begin to move away from figurative work, though his landscape work, in his words, “is still the same picture”[ii] and he has noted a deeper sense of continuity of subject matter than is immediately apparent from subsequent stylistically or thematically diverse projects, acknowledging too his attempts to bring himself ”together” with the landscape in the camera, speaking of the landscape as a “canvas”, where emotion and experience synthesize, the ubiquitous and transitory blend with formal or abstract landscape concerns. We are familiar with his images of ‘things which we normally give no names’[iii] - the containers of ‘land’, ‘sea’ or ‘sky’, vehicles of harmony, colour and form; whilst a straight line can be picked through the early Polaroid triptychs to the land and seascape work of the following decade, Stewart has often deliberately dissolved any formal reference points – or even clues as to location. We have become accustomed to the ‘journey without destination’; the meditative “gateway” or threshold images that transport the viewer; though to where is never clear, and it seems that for Stewart this vagueness is deliberate – ‘I travelled the world in searching of… something. I knew I would never find it. But it was a nice journey’[iv]. However, this refusal of specific reference points or examination of metaphorical intent should not be read as evasion, more a desire for ecumenical connection with the viewer – ‘…(the work) is not meant to be limited in narrative terms… I want it to work on a number of levels. If you want to take it as a journey from dawn to dusk, that’s ok…’[v]

DARKEDEN deals in a similarly tangential way with the emotional aftermath surrounding his sons’ sudden catastrophic illness in the summer of 2006, though this time location is the key. Typically, Stewart gives minimal background, or explanation of the work, though painful hints are given in the titles - ‘vein’, ‘umbra’, ‘shade’ and ‘chasm’. The location of the work ties events specifically to the Northern Highlands where the family were holidaying at the time his son fell ill. An accompanying short story, ‘Nightswimming’, mentions his desire to share this ‘special place’ with his loved ones, who he’d ‘...told of the empty beaches of this remote coastline, an untouched playground, the sand pure white, child perfect, the green sea breathtakingly clear - and so cold it knocks your breath out like an icy punch…’.[vi]

Sutherland, The Parph, and in particular Cape Wrath are locations that reappear, constantly revisited and reworked by Stewart, from his LANDS’ END/CAPE WRATH book project to the video and seascape work of 58º North, his beloved refuge of ‘scattered boulders and dark loaded skies…’.[vii] We find at once a major shift in palette; the romantic blue nightscapes have given way to the biting reds and angry slashes of orange in ‘vein’; the blissed out golden dawn of First Light over Whiten Head that closed his book just two years earlier has turned inexorably to a leaden slate sky that reflects bleakly down into heavy grey seas, or we retreat to the chambered black tomb of Smoo cave. This is a land now seemingly devoid of hope as well as populace, remote mountains and empty shorelines that once read as romantic and mysterious now cold-shoulder the viewer, bleak and hard; at times we feel exposed to the mercy of the elements, battered and weary where once we were comforted or delighted.

The influence of painting had been a useful marker up until now, notably the abstract expressionists, Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin, but it’s also worth noting here Stewart’s recurring interest in the great stillness and drama of the work of the Romantics, particularly Caspar David Friedrich; indeed the suggestion of eternity and infinity of Friedrich's Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1818) is directly referenced in ‘Homage’ (2006, from 58º North), one of very few Stewart self-portraits. Equally worthy of mention is the distressed, insular work of Robert Frank, from The Lines of My Hand (1972) and Moving Out (1994), and Franks’ poignant references to the tragic separate deaths of his daughter Andrea and son Pablo.

Music is another important and overlooked source of inspiration; Stewart has cited the sparse, fragmented work of reclusive, melancholic English folk singer songwriter Nick Drake as a major influence on his work, particularly around the time of his move into landscape photography in 1995. Indeed, Stewart’s first landscape series, From The Morning (1995) took its’ title from the final song on Pink Moon, the third and final LP from the fragile young musician, made in 1972, two years before his death at the age of 26. Drake’s work often draws its imagery from the natural world, one can almost visualize the pared down dark horizons of From The Morning and DARKEDEN in Drake’s lyrics;

A day once dawned, and it was beautiful

A day once dawned from the ground

Then the night she fell

And the air was beautiful

The night she fell all around [viii]

The new work should also be seen in the context of the 2005-06 film/audio collaborations with Keith Berry begun by Stewart before his son’s illness abruptly halted his work in 2006. Berry, a London-based ambient composer, whose contemplative minimalist soundscapes often refer more to silence than to music, provided the soundtrack to two video pieces, 58º North (23 mins) and ORCADIA (60 mins); and in some ways DARKEDEN could effectively be read in part as a visual response.

In a further, if somewhat oblique musical connection, John Lennon, another artist whose more experimental practice has previously been admired by Stewart, celebrated the beauty of Durness and its’ surroundings in The Beatles’ In My Life;“there are places I'll remember all my life…” [ix]. The words of Lennon’s “Tomorrow Never Knows’ do appear towards the end of the second chapter of ‘Nightswimming’ – “Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the Void.”[x]. Perhaps an aberration, but bizarrely, Lennon’s 1972 return to the place of his happy childhood holidays was similarly ill-fated, although the car crash that marred his family holiday with wife Yoko and their children Julian and Kyoko, was alarming, but not serious.

The most telling reference of DARKEDEN passes almost unnoticed in the penultimate image of the series; the stunning sunburst over the black sea, which Stewart titles ‘Beyond’. A vital clue as to origin of this title comes in the quotations that bookend his short story ‘Nightswimming’; words of wisdom given by the Guide to the weary travellers in Enid Blyton's lost children’s classic ‘The Land of Far Beyond’;

“...do not be afraid of any dangers or difficulties you come to. Face them and they will grow small - run away and they will come after you!”[xi]

The book is of course a thinly disguised re-write of Christian allegory The Pilgrims Progress by John Bunyan. Both books revolve around a journey that is spiritual as well as physical — a familiar motif in Stewart’s work. Crucially though, the central figures in ‘The Land of Far Beyond’ are children, following the path from Turmoil to Happiness (the Celestial City in Bunyon's work), suffering trials and tribulations along the way, all the while bearing heavy burdens; not all stay on the path - or complete the journey. Stewart has revealed in conversation that he remembers his mother reading this book to him as a child[xii], and the reference to parent and child relationship is subtle but clearly deliberate; ‘Nightswimming’ also closes with the author waking from recurring bad dreams to the words of the Guide -"to go on, first go back.”[xiii], here re-used by Stewart as a metaphor for both Father and son to find inner strength to continue - ‘Pick up, MOVE, get back on…Breathe. Exist…’[xiv]; as well as telling himself to return, to face his demons and to overcome the nightmare associations of his now defiled paradise.

Religious references are more subtle in ‘The Land of Far Beyond’ than in The Pilgrims Progress, though in both works, the central characters’ ultimate goal is salvation and escape from their burdens. This helps us place the final image in DARKEDEN, ‘Arc’. Perhaps the gentlest photograph in the entire essay, a half smile, the hint of a rainbow, and colour finally returns to the world. The use of the rainbow merges the promise of religious redemption or spiritual renewal with childhood hopes and dreams - treasure just out of reach, the end of the rainbow – just like the horizon line, a representation of the infinite, a place of longing and desire, of constant renewal. At last, a sliver of hope, respite for the weary traveller from the heavy burdens endured on this, the darkest of journeys.

[i] ‘Nightswimming’, short story by Stewart, 2008

[ii] in conversation with the author, 2008

[iii] James Lawson, ‘Scottish Photography Now: Between the Culture and the Land’, catalogue to Light From The Darkroom National Galleries of Scotland, 1995

[iv] Iain Stewart, text extract from Unfinished Dialogue, 1992

[v] Iain Stewart in conversation with James Lawson, Studies in Photography 1996, published by The Scottish Society for the History of Photography.

[vi] From ‘Nightswimming’, short story, 2008, as before

[vii] as v

[viii] From The Morning, Nick Drake, from Pink Moon, Island Records 1972

[ix] In My Life Lennon/McCartney from ‘Rubber Soul’, Northern Songs 1965

[x] Tomorrow Never Knows Lennon/McCartney from ‘Revolver’ Northern Songs 1966

[xi] The Land of Far Beyond, Enid Blyton. Knight Books 1942

[xii] in conversation with the author, 2008

[xiii] as xii

[xiv] ‘Nightswimming’ as before

nightswimming

2009-08-26T13:57:00.044+01:00

In my dreams, I see him now, carrying his burden, too much for a child.
He bears it with such dignity; I burn with shame.

I remember the words of The Guide, from somewhere deep in childhood, somewhere further Beyond; my Mother’s own childhood and mine, a timeslip of future past, where we saw him as a young man, never to be;

‘To go on, First go back.'

3 am. Turn again. Now four o’clock. Soon five. Dawn will come. Have I slept ? Dreams. Such bad dreams. Spectres, yesterdays and tomorrows, dark animal weight on my back that just won’t go.

He clung to me, crying, don’t let them take me. Grabbing at the wall, the handrail, anything, Don’t let them take me, Daddy, don't make me go.

Once, I had loved those Northlands. The warm ground hummed with midsummer. Lazy blue nights stretched on for ever; we slept beneath unseen clouds and stars. Dusk and dawn merging into a delightful sleepy fuzz.

Days disappear. Eternal summer.

Lay down all thoughts...

Slowly you sink, you’re gone, the Old Life is gone. Quiet and dulled, you wipe and redraw, like chalk-lines after a rainstorm. Soon enough that day is numbed and gone, one less. No Place.

“...do not be afraid of any dangers or difficulties you come to. Face them and they will grow small - run away and they will come after you!”

How did I get here? Where is here? So then it starts to nag, cowardice, self-deception, or worse… angry at The World. Mind on lower things, no time for you because you didn’t notice or help me stop It. Small wonder that people cross the road.

awake

Coaxing, pushing, loving – she moved me on. To move us all on, I see that now. Edging gently once more to the Path I knew so well, the Path I thought was lost and spoiled for ever. That Eden in the North, so much in my dreams, so sad, so stained and spoilt. The last place on earth. I must go back. To go on.