Collecting Stories

Stromness, Orkney www.pierartscentre.com

Collecting Stories

Installation view at Pier Arts Centre 2015: Damien Hirst (b1965) Trinity - Pharmacology, Physiology, Pathology, 2000 glass, fibreboard, wood, steel and plastic ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland. Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

First published in the United Kingdom in 2016 by The Pier Arts Centre, 28-30 Victoria Street, Stromness, KW16 3AA www.pierartscentre.com Copyright © 2016 The Pier Arts Centre, Stromness Texts copyright © 2016 the Authors Images copyright © the Pier Arts Centre unless otherwise stated All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any other information storage and retrieval system without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ISBN 978-0-9531131-3-2 Designed by Kerry Cooper www.kerrycooperdesign.com

Collecting Stories

“This is about trying to make something happen in a place where it will really make a difference to young people, their appreciation of themselves and their era. It will inform what they do with their lives and how they see the world.”

Anthony d’Offay, 27 February 2008

ARTIST ROOMS On Tour is supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England, the Art Fund and, in Scotland, the National Lottery through Creative Scotland, making available the ARTIST ROOMS collection of international modern and contemporary art to galleries throughout the UK. ARTIST ROOMS is jointly owned by Tate and the National Galleries of Scotland and was established through The d’Offay Donation in 2008, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund, and the Scottish and British Governments.

Piergroup In Summer 2015, the Pier Arts Centre’s Piergroup embarked on a short research project to investigate what it means to be a collector. Stimulated by the presence of key iconic works

by Damien Hirst on display at the Centre as part of ARTIST ROOMS on Tour and the rare opportunity to see those works in relation to several early Hirst collages loaned to the gallery by the artist, the group participated in a series of practical workshops, discussion forums and carried out several case studies, unravelling the random and impulsive, the deliberate and acquisitive.

One of Antony d’Offay’s intentions when he established ARTIST ROOMS was to encourage young people to know more about contemporary art and importantly to be able to access it in their own community. This is the third ARTIST ROOMS display that the Pier Arts Centre has presented – Bill Viola in 2009, Alex Katz and Cy Twombly in 2011. With each exhibition, Piergroup’s interest and sense of awareness of contemporary art has grown against a backdrop of their increasing knowledge of and engagement with the Pier Arts Centre’s own collection of twentieth and twenty-first century modernist art.

Installation view at Pier Arts Centre 2015: Damien Hirst (b1965) Away from the Flock, 1994, glass, stainless steel, Perspex, acrylic paint, lamb and formaldehyde solution ARTIST ROOMS Tate and National Galleries of Scotland.

Acquired jointly through The d’Offay Donation with assistance from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the Art Fund 2008

Future Collectors This project has allowed us to think about collecting in a most expansive and exciting way. Guided by artist and researcher Rhona Warwick Paterson, we have been encouraged to think about collecting from a variety of perspectives: gathering beach bruck to make Margaret Mellis inspired collages; reminiscing over the stuff we collected as children; and exploring what other individuals have gathered together and which might be categorised as a collection, whether the assembler likes the term or not.

We have gleaned much about what it means to be a collector and have been encouraged to think how we might begin collecting ourselves either for personal delight, or through the opportunity to inform the collecting policy of an art gallery or museum.

From our research we have gathered some thoughts and hope that they provide some guidance and stimulus to others to start a collection of their own.

Collecting is a creative art, it’s adventurous and it’s passionate.

By collecting you are creating a whole environment, not just collecting pictures to put on a wall.

Collecting is a risky and dangerous game.

Don’t be afraid to fray the edges a little bit – by unravelling things you’re opening up

many new possibilities.

The work you choose ought to be able to stand its corner against anything else that is good –

irrespective of period, classification, or medium.

If it’s the last thing you collect – what does it say?

Find out about the artist, find out their story – developing a personal connection with the artist

can make a real difference.

Don’t be put off if you don’t have enough money!

Keep looking, puzzling and questioning.

Do it for love and enjoyment.

Look and look and look again – Rhona Warwick Paterson Hoisted up a cobbled-together rope cradle, Margaret is pulled slowly skywards 85ft into the air by a small group of friends on the ground. She is scaling one of four power station chimneys at Hayle, a small outpost in west Cornwall.

As she is heaved into the air she simultaneously kicks back from and straddles close to the hot surface of the stack.

Bitter winds from the Irish Sea whip her raw cheeks, her face is numb and her bare knees are burnt red from flanking the chimney.

Eventually her friends’ voices are overpowered by the searing staccato of buffeting high winds that now encircle her and chimney both. Though Margaret is alone, freezing and precariously positioned at the top of a power station stack, she recalled later that she was completely without fear and it is here that she begins to paint.

Today is Monday, September the 18th 1939. Germany invaded Poland a couple of weeks ago and last night saw the first Royal Navy ship HMS ‘Courageous’ sunk by a German submarine, killing almost six hundred men just 350 miles west of the Cornish Coastline. This war is closing in. Since decanting to Carbis Bay near St. Ives from London in anticipation of the impending war, Margaret, a newly-wed and fine art graduate, chose Cornwall because it reminded her of the soft rugged landscapes of her childhood home in Scotland.

Since settling there, her husband – a theorist and fledgling painter did his bit for the home front by keeping a market garden which turned out (to his great surprise) to be both incredibly time consuming and hard work. Last month, one evening, a car arrived at their front door and out poured artist friends from London including their triplets, a cook and a nanny, soon after another couple and then another. 1 The inconvenience of reorganising living spaces to accommodate these new housemates and the stresses of playing constant host was in most part, balanced by immersive discussions on art – inspiration was suddenly everywhere and was a source for unending configurations of making and seeing.

On hearing of the tragic strike of HMS ‘Courageous’, conversation among these friends was subdued. Margaret spoke fondly of her Uncle Norman Wilkinson, an artist, who during WW1 had pioneered the skill of ‘Dazzle Camouflage’ in order to protect Allied ships by painting them in a pattern of camouflage. The theory was that rather that concealing ships, dazzle-cam would confuse the enemy by using a radical system of bold shapes and colour contrasts, in order to distort the ship’s form and pace, long enough to impede enemy targeting systems.

Margaret’s friend Barbara interjected, that as they were painters, they should immediately each propose their own skills as artists and it was soon decided that they should use a variation of Wilkinson’s method to somehow ‘vanish’ a potential aerial target close by – the four huge chimneys at the Hayle Power station. With four painters and four chimney stacks they each designed one for each chimney. However, it was Margaret the youngest artist who was elected to paint all of them. Undaunted and amused by her peers obvious trepidation at the vertiginous task at hand, Margaret declared she was the only one who had the ‘head’ for it and promptly set about mixing colours and looking out brushes big enough for the job at hand.

Working from plans where one inch on paper equated to the distance of both her arms outstretched, Margaret allowed herself to look down to where her friends – Barbara, Ben, William and her husband Adrian shouted their instructions and advice into the wind. Margaret Mellis heard only a faintest trace of their voices. Alone at last she began to think, to see, to absorb the colours her birds-eye vista offered. She finds strength in her distance and allows her immediate proximity to the task at hand to completely absorb her, it is here that we can begin to understand Margaret Mellis.

1

First to arrive was Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, then William and Nancy Coldstream and finally Naum

and Miriam Gabo.

Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) Anemones gone to seed, c1957 oil on board, 39.5x40cm Š the Estate of Margaret Mellis Pier Arts Centre Collection

Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) Dead Anemones, 1957 oil on board, 46x30.8cm Š the Estate of Margaret Mellis Pier Arts Centre Collection

Look and look and look again – Rhona Warwick Paterson I look down…puddles of green in a glistening sea. It’s a small plane and the noise of the engine fills the cabin.

I smile to my neighbour. She has a hat box on her knee and is humming to herself, repeating the same part over and over. She catches my eye and smiles back.

‘Have you got an earworm?’ I ask ‘It’s lovely’ ‘A what?’

‘When a piece of music gets stuck in your head..’

‘Oh, yes well.. only when I’m going home’ ‘Ah right like a hymn? I say pointing to the inside of the small plane.

She smiles and tells me it’s a beautiful piece of music called Farewell to Stromness by Peter Maxwell Davies.

She tells me she’s been in Glasgow shopping for her daughter’s wedding and she bought the entire outfit (including the hat) all in one shop. I ask if she is Orcadian and she says ‘I am, and you are from Glasgow I take it?

I tell her I’m going to Stromness to the Pier Art Centre, following a research trail and to work with Piergroup on the subject of ‘collecting’. She smiles and tells me she loves Ben Nicholson’s Fireworks painting, but Sylvia Wishart – an Orcadian artist – is her favourite.

‘Her landscapes could make you weep, she’s better than Turner you know, she understands landscape and light like no other…and we had the odd whisky together back in the day, you know, listening to Billie Holiday…’ She looks away, smiling and starts humming again Farewell to Stromness.

I close my eyes and again see Margaret straddling the top of the power station tower, working diligently, unphased by the danger and provenance of her being there in the first place. Though this story is a mere footnote in her biography, it has fixed in my mind as somehow totemic in understanding her place in history. It serves both as a narrative and an image, hanging between two points of knowing and unknowing. We know that soon after this episode the war begins in earnest, Margaret’s career is overshadowed by her peers, her husband leaves her for her sister, she becomes poor, she rejects the medium of paint and formally her work goes through many reincarnations as she attempts to answer her own questions. But she is tough, circumstances such as these are fuel to her endeavour. In old age however, she is unbound from the responsibilities of marriage, ambition and expectation. She enjoys swimming in the sea every day near to her home in Southwold and around 1980 begins to produce great quantities of what she refers to as assemblage works in driftwood that she has collected from her shore walks. At this point, Margaret’s legacy in art history is secured, though it is often referred to by her association to the St Ives movement of the 1940s. It seems that the activity of collecting materials generates ideas. Photographs of her studio and home around this time show rooms overflowing with fragments of driftwood.

My eyes pop open as the engine changes tone, I look out the window and look down to see a vast blanket of green and I am closer to land than the sea.

“Margaret forced me to swim in the sea everyday, as she had always done (a savage-wake-up). So I was rudely fresh and invigorated when I looked in her studio and felt an enormous affinity with her constructions and the way she worked. [……]Margaret told me about Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth and her close relationship with them.

She talked about how they came across Alfred Wallis whose work both Margaret and I love, but something I truly cannot understand, is why Margaret is not up there - large on the map with her contemporaries.”1 Damien Hirst.

1

Foreword written by Damien Hirst for Margaret Mellis exhibition at Austin/Desmond Fine Art, London

and Newlyn Art Gallery, Cornwall 2001.

Installation View at Pier Arts Centre 2015: Damien Hirst (b1965) Red and Pink Balloon, 1986, paper, card, paint & glue, 97.1x86.6cm Photography Š Tate, 2015

Look and look and look again -- Rhona Warwick Paterson Collected Observations; Stromness, Orkney, June-September 2015 Colours shards words stories songs arranged and rearranged.

Sleeves of coins, bin bags of trolls, boxes of tissue-bound books our collections reveal — make visible our passions and pathologies There is solitude too, moments alone to order and contemplate. At times language fails to communicate what the instinct proffers.

Connections are made and rejected by unseen systems as unique as fingerprints.

Kicked in frustration to be placed later in careful concentration.

Art trains the eye, the default set only to light, balance, colour – look and look and look again.1 A warning! collections require feeding. Without fresh stories to tell, fresh additions to rupture order, fresh hands and eyes to rearrange and place, then atrophy is inevitable. At times, such neglect is preserved – suspended in amber for the connoisseur, academics and fetishists to dissect.

Curators, collectors, artists, poets, writers dance and quarrel together.

A plan is concocted somewhere and leaving pints half drunk, pile into cars to walk around the Ring of Brodgar against a Magritte sky. 2 Chatter slows dark clots of bodies that profile against the earth’s lid begin to separate out.

Alone now, thoughts of proximity and scale render you grappling for a foothold and as you lean with your back on a standing stone to look up, scanning the skies for a pattern. Looking Searching for the order of things.

1980 – Somewhere on the Suffolk coastline; Broken and charred fragments – from boats, oars or rudders punctuate the shoreline.

Frequently she pauses to flip one over with a wellied toe.

She’s looking for shards painted in bright nautical gloss paint, her pupils dilate to reflect a blistered vermillion remnant or flaked slivers of wood in periwinkle blue.

These finds would be quickly absorbed into pockets and bags.

On encountering sodden shoes, boots or flip-flops, ritualistically she picks them up, only to hurl them back to the sea and watch as they dance away into the horizon line.

Thirty-five years later on the shores of Birsay, Skaill and Yesnaby, west coast of mainland Orkney.

Listen: a fourworded wavespeech: seesoo, hrss, rsseeiss, ooos 3 A frayed length of bleached azure nylon rope, a cranial fragment of buoy the colour of a Miami sunset.

Collected, rejected, ordered, owned.

Hands and eyes grapple at possible histories, battered and blanched and care is given now.

1

Quoted in part from Ronnie Duncan, Collector.

2

Empire of Lights, Rene Magritte. Where a night street scene is ‘contradicted’ by a daylight sky.

3

From Ulysses, James Joyce, 1922

Collecting Stories Margaret Gardiner (1904-2005) Founder of the Pier Arts Centre I must now go back in time and place to London in the

Now I must make another time jump and move on till well

thirties, when I first met Barbara Hepworth. An immediate

after the day when Martin and I first landed on Orkney.

friendship sprang up between us and before long I had

Martin was again the trigger.

met Ben Nicholson and other of her artist friends, among

‘What are you going to do with all this stuff?’ he asked.

them Henry Moore, Naum Gabo, Alexander Calder and

‘I don’t think that I shall ever want to live in a house full of

the poet and critic, Herbert Read. At that time none of

valuable works of art.’

them were generally well-known outside art circles, and

‘Oh well,’ I said, without pausing to consider, ‘I’ll give it

although they did not conform to the romantic stereotype

to Orkney.’

of artists starving in garrets, they were certainly not well

‘A good idea’ said Martin.

off. But they were sustained by a pioneering spirit, a sense of discovery, a deep belief in the importance

It seemed to me then quite simple – merely a matter of a

of art and its place in society. Art mattered.

new clause in my will. But it didn’t turn out like that, for when I spoke to my Orkney friends about the possibility

These new friends opened my eyes to fresh possibilities

they took it up with enthusiasm, wanted it to be extended

in art and I began to understand and grew to love their

from just a gallery to an arts centre and to be set up

work. Barbara and Ben were having a real struggle to

straight away. At about the same time my friend, that

keep going – particularly after their triplet children were

excellent artist Sylvia Wishart, who owned the warehouse

born – and they had to augment the rare sales of their

on a little pier in Stromness, told me that she wanted to

essential work by designing textiles and rugs, printing

leave it and move further outside the town. The other half

strips of cloth with lino cuts, and by any other ploys they

of the pier and the adjoining house in Victoria Street was

could devise. So it was that whenever things began to

a youth hostel and it seemed to me that if only it were

look desperate for them and if I could do so, I would

possible to buy both warehouse and hostel they, and the

buy a carving or a painting. That was how, piecemeal

pier itself, would make a most exciting arts centre.

and without deliberation, my collection came into being.

I have always disliked its being called a collection, a

from An Unfolding Gift The Pier Arts Centre Collection,

word that implies deliberation, a purpose – praiseworthy

Thames & Hudson, 2010

or mercenary – but certainly not the casual, slapdash, impulsive way in which I acquired those works. And I hate being called a collector, for I have never set out to collect.

However, it seems that it’s impossible to escape the title.

In later years, when they had become well-known and were no longer struggling, both Barbara and Ben were generous in giving me works. Also, from time to time, when they had moved to St Ives, I bought from younger artists whom I met there. This gave the growing collection a certain consistency – although I occasionally introduced an ‘outsider’ who took my fancy – and is one of the reasons why I think that it should remain as a whole and not be dispersed. For it exemplifies a significant phase in the history of modern art.

Margaret Mellis (1914-2009) Driftwood Relief Three, 1980, wood and paint, 58.5 x 86.8cm Š the Estate of Margaret Mellis Pier Arts Centre Collection

Collecting Collecting Stories Stories Brandon Logan, student Over the course of this project, working closely with both Margaret Gardiner’s collection and the works by Damien Hirst from the ARTIST ROOMS collection, the word collecting has taken on a variety of meanings and guises. We have been researchers, curators, beachcombers, artists and writers. For me, if collecting is to be successful, then the greatest success seems to be found when the personal nature of the act is embraced.

I recently watched a documentary on Hepworth – she speaks for quite a time about picking up a stone and how it makes one feel intrinsically linked to the landscape. So I can take a pebble from Rackwick, – on Hoy, in Orkney – back to Edinburgh and Rackwick still exists, because that stone is on my bookshelf. I think it’s difficult for a collection not to be personal, because each part of that collection, whether you like it or not, has a story behind it profoundly linked back to you.

Before taking part in this project, the word ‘collecting’ carried some connotations of coldness for me, or at least a detachedness. Something mechanical or automated.

Now, however, I think that collecting is an emotionally charged experience, and that some of the finest collections are those that have been allowed to grow out of personal taste, chance, passion, decision and indecision. The true and committed collector assumes all the roles mentioned above and has the potential to create something new, that may live, breathe and above all, evolve.

Laura Drever, artist Being involved with Piergroup and this project has made me start to look at all the things I collect both within and outwith the house. As part of my practice, I am currently working on a project where I’m making (and collecting) a drawing a day.

I’m using the discipline of ‘collecting’ as the tool to collect other material too. Every place I go, I pick up something – I’m trying to be very loose about it, trying to pick up just anything – but when I get home, I realise that my choice has been totally considered – the chance something has everything to do with the work that I’m doing or the other things that I collect.

It could be a stone, it could be a shell, it could be a cotton thread…….it could be a drawing!

Although I didn’t set out for it to be, it’s inextricably related to what I’m already doing, linked to the way that I look and experience the landscape.

I want it to be unconscious, but I think that’s just how we are and those collections – the shoe boxes of stuff you assemble when younger – and the selection of things I’ve kept from different periods in my life, they all link up to the collecting I’m doing now.

When I choose to pick up something and take it home, put it in my pocket, find it a month later and then look at it again, I re-experience that time, that memory and the colours that I saw that day – it can transport me back to that moment. It’s very much the way I look and work. It’s not just about collecting materials or tangible stuff or visual references, it’s about accumulating all kinds of subtle and imperceptible knowledge and experience.

Collecting Stories Lauren Henning, gallery trainee Coming nose to nose with a sheep in formaldehyde was not how I expected to begin my traineeship at the Pier Arts Centre! From unwrapping and placing plastic anatomical teaching models in oversized medicine cabinets to condition checking butterflies pinned to painted canvasses, the installation of the Damien Hirst ARTIST ROOMS exhibition gave me a unique perspective that few have experienced.

Hirst’s exhibitions are meticulously stage-managed with only the immaculate outcome being seen by the public.

Being party to all the people and organisations that go into the final display: from the specialist technicians that worked with the lethal formaldehyde solution for Away from the Flock; the film makers and photographers that recorded the show; to the marketing and curatorial staff from ARTIST ROOMS and Tate that worked closely with the team at the Pier Arts Centre, was a privilege and an insight – all enhanced the experience of the final exhibition.

My preconceptions of Hirst’s work completely changed during the installation of the exhibition and my research into his work. His friendship with Margaret Mellis was an unexpected component and one on which the Pier’s concept of the whole exhibition hinged. Having previously thought of Hirst as a remote and controversial figure, I now find his work – through his deep understanding of art history and his particular interest in Mellis – to be challenging, thought-provoking, and layered with reference and meaning.

I had the opportunity to research and led regular public tours around the exhibition and this was my favourite experience during the exhibition. While discussing the show with different groups, I became aware that the audience’s reactions, both positive and negative, were always very strong, demonstrating to me the power and emotion that contemporary art can evoke.

Ronnie Duncan, collector What drives people to collect one thing and not another?

Not just my collecting, but others like me. I have bought

Is there a series of connecting relationships which present

paintings and thought, ‘what have I done?’

themselves to you as a collector? Is it more methodological

If it’s paintings against pints of beer, what have I done!

or does one collect purely on an intuitive level?

And then I would think that it’s alright after all.

I’ve always bought what I liked with the hope that I

I remember buying my first picture - it was in 1948 on

keep on liking it. No methodology about it. So in

Hampstead Heath by a completely unknown artist and

that sense, I’m an enthusiast for having things around.

because I buy what I like in the hope of keeping on liking

My philosophy, as far as there is one, is that museums’

it, I can tell you that I’ve still got it. It’s a crowd scene,

collections should be open to everyone to see. At the end

utterly unknown artist, but it still gives back to me,

of the day, paintings and sculptures are made to

which is great. It’s not what a public gallery wants,

be looked at and lived with.

but it represents to me one of the many, many times that I said, ‘Gosh, I’ve got to have that, bought it

Collecting is a creative art, you need to live with art and it’s what I’ve done in the 65 years or so since I began it.

I’ve made a few mistakes, I’ve lived to love a lot of what I’ve got. One point I will make that I think could be of interest: whether my collection is important doesn’t really matter, but the act of it does matter.

and then seen what happens.

Collecting Stories Heather Batchelor, student Throughout the ARTIST ROOMS Piergroup Collections Project, and from my regular gallery visits over the past year, I have become increasingly aware of the significance of collectors donating their artworks during their lifetimes.

It seems to create the necessary freedom for exciting curatorial interventions whilst reaffirming that such a collection is a gift to a very specific community and should be treasured as such.

At an early stage of the project we had to create two hypothetical collections – each with three artworks – one from the Pier, one from ARTIST ROOMS and one from any other collection. The first grouping was to be an unconstrained personal selection. I chose Sylvia Wishart, Hoy Sound, 1987 from the Pier Arts Centre collection to remind me of Orkney and the creativity which happens in so many homes (often during the long winter nights). From ARTIST ROOMS: Jeff Koons, New Hoover Convertibles, Green, Red, Brown, New Shelton Wet/Dry 10 Gallon Displaced Doubledecker 1981-7. This would be perfect if my future home is grand enough to accommodate a chapel!! And any other work.......I really enjoyed

Our second selection was about selecting works that

watching Let It Go by Rachel Maclean – I like that it says

would be displayed in relation to each other in a gallery

something important to me that I don’t entirely understand

context. I made the assumption that this would be at

(I wonder how my feelings towards the work might

the Pier. Thinking back to Orkney and to the Centre’s

change over time).

collection my first thoughts are always of light and shade – the bright summer days and dark winter nights.

So keeping things simple, firstly, from the Pier’s collection, I chose Weybourne 1996 by Roger Ackling, then, from ARTIST ROOMS, Martin Creed, Work No.227: The lights going on and off, 2000. Lastly, an artist that I think should definitely have a permanent installation in Orkney – James Turrell. I get the impression that he would choose/create the artwork himself! …….but honestly, I don’t think I would actually want to collect an artwork unless I had already met the artist!

David Ward, artist I grew up in Wolverhampton and when I was a schoolboy I used to go into Wolverhampton Art Gallery and stand in front of 19th century genre paintings of countryside scenes and wonder why this thing that people talked about – the thing that art did to you – wasn’t happening to me. Because here I was standing in front of oil paintings and feeling nothing!

There was a moment later, I suppose when I was just about to leave school, one day I became aware that something had happened in the Art Gallery – there was a Richard Hamilton print and a Bridget Reilly print and a Joe Tilson print! This was all to do with the fact that a new Director, David Rodgers, had arrived at Wolverhampton with a different idea.

It was completely transforming as you can imagine, very, very interesting, and of course this formed the basis of Wolverhampton now being well-known for its Pop Art collection. And it’s entirely due to the fact that there was an individual that went against the grain.

There’s curiosity – that’s a wonderful motivation I think for collecting.

Acknowledgements

Piergroup would like to thank the following people for their support, encouragement, experience, knowledge and participation in the Collecting Stories project.

Anthony d’Offay, Ronnie Duncan, David Ward, Laura Drever, Neil Firth and Anneli Holmstorm A special thank you to Rhona Warwick Paterson for bringing her very creative approach to the project and for her three-part essay which forms a central part of the publication.

The Pier Arts Centre acknowledges the financial support of ARTIST ROOMS On Tour which is supported by the Art Fund and, in Scotland, the National Lottery through Creative Scotland with additional support from University of Glasgow Affiliate programme.

Piergroup 2015: Heather Batchelor, Erlend Firth, Megan Harcus, Lauren Henning, Brandon Logan, Erlend Prendergast and Stephanie Spence.

The Pier Arts Centre is a registered Scottish Charity No SC014815

Stromness, Orkney www.pierartscentre.com Open Tuesday - Saturday 10.30am - 5.00pm (additional openings - see website)