Art & Film

Arrive by sea in this audiovisual presentation of archive photographs and take in the impressive view of the hills of Hoy. Meet the ferryman and land at the pier. Visit the Norse farm at the Bu, pass the medieval Kirk and hear about the Hoy Express. Narrated by John Budge with voices from the Hoy Heritage project, Tales o Hoy.

Join geologist Dr John Flett Brown on the classic Orkney walk along the West Shore of Stromness in this new film made by Mark Jenkins. The journey begins with a fossil beach on the shore of ancient Lake Orcadie, the great lake from which today’s Orkney rocks began their story as sediments.

Art explores the deep time of geology in a new Japan-Scotland exhibition, developed by Glasgow-based artist Ilana Halperin and Oban-based curator Naoko Mabon. Join them on a tour with artists Yoshihisa Nakano and Keijiro Suzuki from Yamaguchi and Orkney geologist Dr John Flett Brown, with a workshop and tea/coffee biscuits too.

Oceanographer Dr Neil Banas looks at how a story by a master Haida mythteller, Skaay, reflects the marine ecology on the North Pacific Ocean’s edge. “He managed to capture the dynamics of ecosystems at the ‘edge of chaos’ in his mythic frame with an accuracy that mathematical modellers still struggle to duplicate.”

The atmosphere of the world-famous Ness of Brodgar excavations is captured in drawing, painting and sound, by Karen Wallis, an Artist in Residence since 2016. It's more than a documentary, evoking the physical existence of the dig and focusing on the archaeologists’ everyday process in a flow of voices and images.

The need to rethink the human relationship with the natural world is the context of Selena S. Kuzman’s new performance film. It draws on the old Highland stories of deer shapeshifting into women, bridging the human and natural worlds. Costume and headdress are created from found and pre-loved fabrics and objects from the past.

Join an artist, a poet and a naturalist as they bring our attention to Orkney’s grasses. Made at the start of the grass season by Mark Jenkins, this film weaves natural history, botany, poetry and photography into a thoughtful and lingering visual experience. With Rebecca Marr, Valerie Gillies and John Crossley.