Exhibitions 2022
There’s a rich mixture of themes in this year’s exhibitions. Art meets geology in The Rock Cycle at the Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, and just along the street Orkney’s Neolithic past is the theme of After Orcadia at the Northlight Gallery. A little further on, Stromness Museum features the story of an ongoing excavation of an Iron Age broch in South Ronaldsay in The Cairns: Living in the Landscape.
There’s archaeology in Kirkwall as well, with a story of work in Deerness to study remains from an ancient burial site by the sea. The Newark Project is at the Orkney Museum in Tankerness House. Not far away at Kiln Corner is Orkney Wireless Museum, a particularly appropriate good place to visit in this centenary year of public broadcasting.
Hoy Heritage Centre features the story of William Sinclair Ritch from Rackwick and his 38 years of work out in the Nor’ Wast – From Hoy to Hudson Bay and Back.
And online, an artist, a poet and a naturalist come together to focus on Scotland’s wild grasses in When the Grass Dances. Also online is Orkney Camera Club’s new Festival exhibition, Bringing the Light Back.
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’!
THE ROCK CYCLE (YAMAGUCHI)
Art explores the deep time of geology in this new exhibition at the Pier Arts Centre. The rock cycle concept looks over long stretches of time at how rocks form and weather, with the debris gradually forming new rocks as the cycle goes round anew. We ourselves are a tiny part of great flows, with calcium carbonate, for instance, once
WHEN THE GRASS DANCES
Grasses are often overlooked despite their importance to humans and their animals. Join an artist, a poet and a naturalist as they bring our attention to grasses in Orkney and mainland Scotland. 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. Meet
AFTER ORCADIA
Islands at night Hill fires pierce the darkness Low hanging stars Artist Rebecca Marr and archaeologist Mark Edmonds follow up their book Orcadia with further exploration in worlds and photographs of how land, sea and particularly stone shaped the lives of Neolithic Orcadians. “Orcadia was the first time that the two of us had worked together. A long
HOY TO HUDSON BAY AND BACK
In 1871 I made a voyage in the Hudson Bay Company’s ship Ladie Head going to moose factory in Hudson’s Bay and back to London, England. The following year I came to Moose factory to work for the Hudson’s Bay Company. William Sinclair Ritch from Rackwick stayed 38 years in the company’s service. When he came back to his
ORKNEY WIRELESS MUSEUM
‘I was just stunned by this wealth of artefacts,’ said BBC Scotland’s Head of Radio, Jeff Zycinski. ‘It was just an incredible experience.’ You can see why when you visit the Wireless Museum at Kiln Corner, Kirkwall, and explore their wealth of exhibits, from crystal detectors to thermionic valves where the filaments glowed. The Wireless Set No. 19 was designed