Exhibitions at the Festival
Many aspects of Orkney can be seen in the annual exhibition of Orkney Camera Club. Each year they take a Festival theme and come up with a richly varied mix of images, whether in the Orkney Library or, as in 2020 and 2021, online.
Also online in these two years have come the 360-degree panoramic images of Katy Firth of Stromness Museum, with journeys to the islands of Graemsay and Swona.
The Archive section of Orkney Library has provided some fascinating exhibitions commemorating notable Orcadians such as the great mapmaker Murdoch Mackenzie and the writer and folklorist Ernest W. Marwick.
And drawing on Orkney’s past have come new images for today, with the selkie legend reimagined in terms of transforming ocean plastic into upcycled clothing, one of several exhibitions developed by Selena Kuzman on turning waste materials into objects of beauty.
Other exhibitions have ranged from special displays at Orkney Wireless Museum to Sue Jane Taylor’s offshore images from the Beatrice Field. The bicentenary of the Arctic explorer John Rae was marked by paintings of his favourite places on both sides of the Atlantic by Canadian artist Sheena Fraser McGoogan and Orkney artist Jane Glue.
Rebecca Marr travelled back further in time to the origin of Orkney’s rocks as sediments in the great Lake Orcadie, several hundred millions years ago, and the imprints of that time that continue in the paving stones of the Stromness street today.
ORKNEY WIRELESS MUSEUM
‘I was just stunned by this wealth of artefacts,’
HOY TO HUDSON BAY AND BACK
In 1871 I made a voyage in the Hudson
AFTER ORCADIA
Islands at night Hill fires pierce the darkness Low
WHEN THE GRASS DANCES
Grasses are often overlooked despite their importance to humans
THE ROCK CYCLE (YAMAGUCHI)
Art explores the deep time of geology in this
BRINGING THE LIGHT BACK
The Camera Club exhibition is always a Festival highlight. Each year the Club work on a theme, and this year, with the hope that the months and years of lockdown are now fading, they have come with a message of hope – ‘Bringing the Light Back’!
