Author Archives: Rebecca Marr

Look again

The exhibition Look Again is opening today Saturday 02 March at Orkney Museum. The group show, curated by Ian Collins, features artists’ responses to Orkney’s wartime remains. The show runs until 23 March at Orkney Museum, Tankerness House in Kirkwall.

For the show I have revisited some medium format darkroom prints made back in 2009 repeating the original images to form montages suggesting kaleidoscopes and soundwaves. The prints are on aluminium in a black box frame and 50cm square.

You can see more of my photographs of Orkney war architecture here.

Weather window

The large cloud prints have settled in the windows of Northlight Gallery in Stromness after their spell at the Pier Arts Centre. So if you fancy a weather window….

The top one is Altocumulus and cirrocumulus and second one is Altocumulus, both are cloudscapes above Stromness photographed in October last year, 2023. They are 100x75cm printed on aluminium and are single edition prints (just one of each) and are available for £200 each.

The large prints are joined by a small one called ‘Cloud Atlas III’ taken from a series made in 2008 .

Thank you to Cary Welling of Northlight.

The clouds will be in the windows until 06 February.

Cloudy thinking

Altocumulus, Stromness. October 2023. Digital photograph on aluminium. Single edition. 100 x 75cm

This week, stormbound for three days, I’ve been thinking about the weather a fair bit. And if you’ve been following my work you’ll know that I often have my head in the clouds. It’s where I like to be and it’s why I’m a member of the Cloud Appreciation Society. Thirty international members of the society are heading for Stromness next year to see if what I’ve been saying is true – that Orkney is one of the best places for cloud watching.

One good thing about being stormbound this week is that at least I can now attend the opening of the Pier Arts Centre’s Annual Open Exhibition.

I’m showing these two cloudscapes in the exhibition.

Both are taken on the same day in October looking up above Scapa Flow from Stromness. The first shows altocumulus of the floccus variety and in the second the altocumulus is joined by some cirrocumulus, some of which in the bottom left is of the lacunosus type.

Altocumulus & cirrocumulus, Stromness. October 2023. Digital photograph on aluminium. Single edition. 100 x 75cm

Lacunosus means ‘with holes’ in the Latin and is a rare and fleeting formation. Altocumulus means ‘height’ and ‘heap’, floccus meaning ‘tuft of wool’ and cirrocumulus means ‘wisp’ and ‘heap’. I like to find out the latin for cloud names as it draws my attention to the feature of the cloud, what it looks like. What is latin for cloud? Nimbus. And that’s the name of my sister (and fellow Cloud Appreciation Society member) Sarah’s cat. A silver tabby with cloudy fur and a thunderstorm personality.

I like my cloudscapes to be without any landmarks, I don’t want scale to be part of it. I want to enjoy the formations of the clouds, the shapes and compositions of the sky. Big prints freed from the recognisability of horizon and colour, so you can just study the clouds and get lost in them.

You can see more of my clouds here.

Orcadia’s last days

The exhibition of Orkney artists at Brown’s Gallery, Inverness, closes this Saturday. It’s been a delight to show my seaweed circles in such a beautiful space with other Orkney artists. Run and catch the show if you are in the Highlands. Thank you to the gallery for all they have done including sending these installations shots x.

Unique edition photograms of seaweeds on silver gelatin paper made in my darkroom here in Stromness, Orkney. Framed in limed ash with off white mount, frame size 40x50cm. Contact the gallery to speak to Emma or Gordon if you are interested in owning the works.

Find out more about the social history of seaweed in Orkney at my website Orkney Seaweed Stories.

<Bladderwrack SOLD

Ola

Kind words from the Ola Gorie website in their Artists of Orkney blog posts.

Ola Gorie’s name is synonymous with Orkney jewellery and her life as an artist and among the artists and writers around her is a significant part of the culture of the islands. Her story makes a fascinating read.

Colin Kirkpatrick and Laura Drever have also featured in the Artists of Orkney blog and are also showing along with me and ten other Orkney artists at the Orcadia exhibition at Brown’s gallery in Inverness. What a great space and a lovely opening event despite half of the Orkney artists being stormbound. It is the seaweed work in the blogpost on Ola Gorie’s site that is on show at Brown’s gallery until 11 November. Thank you to Emma and Gordon and Lucy.

Brown’s Gallery, Inverness features work by Louise Martin, Magdalena Choluj, Samantha Clark, Ingrid Budge, Frances Pelly, Frances Scott, Anne Bevan, Alan Watson, Sigurd Smith, John Cumming, Laura Drever, Colin Kirkpatrick, and me.

Every now and then my photographs turn up on the Old Gorie blog and I like getting Duncan’s emails that send me on a mission to find a horse or a hay bale or a woman in a headscarf. See the blogpost on Orkney’s Agricultural Show Week.

Orcadia in Inverness

It’s particularly pleasing when the two places that you are most connected to connect themselves, one where I was born, the other where I live. And it’s happening this month when Brown’s Gallery in Inverness is holding an exhibition of Orkney artists.

collage from top to bottom: Sigurd Smith / Samantha Clark / Alan Watson / Ingrid budge / Laura Drever

I’m delighted to be showing seaweed photograms alongside the work of:

Anne Bevan,
Ingrid Budge,
Magdalena Choluj (inkloof),
Samantha Clark,
John Cumming,
Laura Drever,
Colin Kirkpatrick,
Louise Martin,
Frances Pelly,
Sigurd Smith
and Alan Watson

Orcadia will open on Saturday 14 October and run until 11 November. Brown’s Gallery is at 81a Castle Street, Inverness, IV2 3EA. The gallery hours are Wednesday to Saturday 11am – 6pm or by appointment.

Brown’s Gallery is a beautiful space. I’ll make sure and post some installations shots for anyone who can’t get there in person.

Show week

It was nostalgic to reflect on the culture shock of my first Show Week in Orkney back in 2007. That year Martin Parr was photographing at the shows which only added to the surreal experience. My photographs from the Agricultural Shows featured this month in the blog for Ola Gorie . The Show Week work was from the Art & Agriculture residency with the Pier Arts Centre. I’m one of the people in Orkney whose story goes something like this…we came here for a year long job and we never left.

Why would you? There is a week long festival of agricultural shows. And following on a week or two later the Festival of the Horse in South Ronaldsay.

Next year I fancy doing what we did back then and going to every single show: Hoy, Sanday, East Mainland, ‘Hope, Shapinsay, Dounby, County Show and back to the ‘Hope for the Festival of the Horse.

Tangled: Orkney’s social history of seaweed

The Tang & Ware seaweed exhibition at Northlight Gallery in Stromness has a few days left to run. It closes at 4pm on Wednesday 23 August.

A legacy of the exhibition is my new website that looks at Orkney’s social history of seaweed. The writings are reworked from my MLitt dissertation from a decade ago and are presented in bite sized chapters covering seaweed as food, fodder, fuel and its presence in Orkney’s folklore and fortunes.

It will come as no surprise that the islands are tied up with seaweed however the layers of connection are astonishing. Just like there are a multitude of species of his remarkable family there are a multitude of ways in which humans and seaweed connect across time.

Visit Orkney seaweed stories website here

The website development was supported by a VACMA (Visual Arts a Craft Makers Award).

Tang & Ware

A visit to my hillside pal Dawn has resulted in this, a new exhibition of algal art in Stromness gallery Northlight featuring the work of seven artists. Dawn’s sculptures using filed and painted air bladders of knotted wrack were so beautiful they just had to be on show. The idea grew and I invited other seaweed artists to exhibit.

The show includes photography, drawings, sculpture as well as pressed seaweeds. The exhibiting artists are Ingrid Budge, Magdalena Choluj, Alison Moore, Ami Robb, Dawn Stevens, Sarah Wylie and me.

It is wonderful to be sharing the space together and sharing our love of seaweed. It’s everywhere, it’s everyday but somehow otherworldly and strange. I think as a group we’ve played with that strangeness and encouraged people to take in the beauty of seaweed.

Among my work is a series called Tangle pareidolia (the phenomenon of seeing faces in shapes). These faces are found dried tangles at Warebeth and Rackwick beaches.

I am also exhibiting photograms of several of my favourite seaweeds – tangle, dabberlocks, mermaid’s tresses, knotted wrack, bladderwrack and sea spaghetti.

Each photogram is a unique darkroom print on 16x12inch silver gelatin Ilford photographic paper, printed by myself here in Stromness, Orkney. They are framed in limed ash and priced at £250 each.

There are cards of each design and these are £2.50 each or 5 for £10. Postage included.

The exhibition will run from today until Wednesday 23 August. Open Mon – Sat 11-4. 

Expect strange beauty.