Bealach’s latest art commission in partnership with Time to Shine explores the bus routes across the island entitled ’Mapping the Arteries’. The project is hosting two visual artist residencies; Roos Dijkhuizen and Janie Nicoll who have spent time travelling bus routes around the island, producing a piece of artwork inspired by their experience. The temporary art works are displayed in some of the iconic concrete bus shelters dotted around the island.
Roos and Jane have kept a blog to keep you up to date with their work so far:
Day 1
Inverness > bus > Ullapool > ferry > Stornoway > bus > Tarbert
entering the sea shuttle
we take our seats
facing the stage of a tidal orchestra
engines on
we glide through liquid sheets of cloud
up ahead
the chords begin tuning
reflections are in vibration
the stage sinks in
and bellows out
oboe drum
see me
sea man
sea swells, stomachs drop
membrane within a membrane within a membrane etc
our ears are floating in a giant cytoplasm
the sheets of liquid have turned into xylophone keys
rippling with each other fighting with gravity
centre stage, the crescendo on repeat:
slippery keys
tubular bells
and a cymbal wave
Day 2
Stornoway > Callanish > Stornoway
They shuffled their small and irregular shapes into a rough chain, like a primitive necklace and became fixed forever as the outer hebrides, a marvellous but fragile world on the edge of a wild ocean. -Anon
Through the brown moor, past the frames of houses and plastic shells forgotten or lost to those who brought them there, I came across the settlement of a 5,000 year old composition of rock.
Also marking the land at one stage
, but
unknown to be forever left in position. Their presence and placement on this elevated patch made the otherwise ordinary landscape around it incredibly mystique. I felt on the edge, able to see a 360 horizon and picturing my location on a mental map. Wandering around the grounds of Callanish instigated a feeling for all previous human movements and activity on the same turf. I was convinced I understood the symbology of constructing the stone circle in that spot, merely an observation, while reliving potential geographical steps.
There is no human here now, but there was and will be. Wandering through, they are there and then here, in the distance, in the past, foreseen to arrive. Signifiers, standing in time, what can we predict when we were not there, we are here. Now you see me. We met and we keep meeting.
Day 3
Hushinsh > Harris circuit West – East > Stornoway > Tolsta > Stornoway
Third day in Tarbert, I felt very lucky to finally drive to Hushinish with the company of a local who lives and works in town. He was happy to share what he knew of the land, discussions became about the power of history and its roots, how a story can be embellished and travel through generations. A helicopter flew over carrying a barrel of live salmon. The cloud and rain kept a lot of the views hidden. The islands were mystified and through words we had to imagine perspective, shape and space.
It became a slow dissection of everything we drove past, the conversations were in parts as another instigator on the horizon changed the subject. It was a lot about who owns and has owned what ranging from local multimillionaires to nationalities of swiss, norwegian, austrian, german, indian. I’d never thought about buying an island, but apparently it was quite cheap until recently.
Voices in remote places need to be heard.
Day 4
Stornoway > Port of Ness? > Stornoway > Port of Ness? > Stornoway > Bayble Pier > Airport
A day of many missed buses.
Everything at a slant.
Symbols that suggest an opening, continuing, beyond and infinite.
Much time spent in the waiting room.
Voices are so bold, accentuating, melodic in the quiet environment.
Conversations on council cuts.
Issues of redevelopment.
From St Kilda to the public toilet.
Topographical lines and Gaelic land names.
Multilayered images, dissection of islands.
Aluminium prints and markings of cycles, sound.
Modelling of igneous rock.
The structure is there.
