You are warmly invited to join us for the preview of our new exhibition 'Saoirse Higgins and Jonathan Ford – SurvØY', which opens in the Reid Gallery at 5pm on Friday 19th September.
SurvØY was developed over four years as a contemporary artist ‘island almanac’, surveying and monitoring scales of change in the context of the island environment of Papa Westray, one of the most northern Orkney islands.
Islands are highly sensitive to changing natural ecosystems, in relation to weather, land and sea. Change is magnified and intense, observed and recorded phenological data is a vital indicator for future trends. For SurvØY artists Saoirse Higgins and Jonathan Ford measured, monitored, observed, recorded, collected and archived change. Weather change, daylight change, climate change, sea level change, reactions to change, tidal change, migratory change (in birds), geological change and seasonal change. Working with and within an island, this artist-led survey challenges notions of island time, island identity, and the cyclical/orbital nature of an island environment.
In particular, the exhibition focuses on a year-long cycle looking at multiple viewpoints for resilient, caring, adaptive systems, providing a benchmark for future generation islanders, islands and communities in times of rapid environmental change. It is placed in the historical and cultural context of long-term island surveys by pioneers such as Praeger, Tim Robinson and Murdoch McKenzie, along with landscape poets and film makers such as Nan Shepherd, Margaret Tait, Isabel Hutchinson, Hans Jürgen von der Wense.
SurvØY manifests in the coming months as an exhibition with limited edition vinyl; an online transmission from Orkney as Holm Sound, an offshoot of Oyfestivalpapay; and a SurvØY journal publication.
Saoirse Higgins is an artist, educator and researcher looking at our inter-scalar positioning and energy orbits in the context of the Anthropocene, islands and surrounding seas. She completed her practice-based PhD in 2020 at The Glasgow School of Art.
Jonathan Ford is an artist, the Papay ranger, a curator of feathers, bird folklorist, dialect collector, director of a festival of islands, sculptor, writer, and performance artist.
Supported by Creative Scotland
