Across Land
and Sea
EXHIBITION: 11 - 20 OCTOBER 2019
CIRCUS ARTSPACE @ INVERNESS CREATIVE ACADEMY
Featuring:
SHAUN FRASER | PATRICIA SHONE | VIVIAN ROSS-SMITH
This exhibition represents the coming together of three artists, spanning the Highlands and Islands, who share a common interest in elemental material and process. Through their work, each individually draws from the northern landscape and references their own notion of community and place.
Shaun Fraser is a sculptor and visual artist based between Scotland, London and Amsterdam. Growing up in the Highlands, landscape has always featured heavily as a part of his notion of self. His work often comments upon links to landscape and connections with a wider sense of situ and environment. By incorporating soil and natural inclusions into his sculptural works he taps into some of this disposition; the ability to evoke a sense of place. Fraser is a recent graduate of the Royal College of Art (MA 2017) and previously studied at Edinburgh College of Art (BA Hons 2012). Selected recent exhibitions have included showcases at No20 Arts London, Galeria Carles Taché in Barcelona, Groundwork Gallery, Christie’s Auction House London and ‘Collect 2019’ at Saatchi Gallery in London.
Patricia Shone is a ceramicist who is based in the Sleat area of Skye. Having been born in Scotland but then brought up in South Devon, Shone eventually settled in the north-west Highlands. Shone says of her work:
‘My work is informed by the powerful landscape around me on the Isle of Skye. It is developed in response to the feeling of connection with its inhabitants and their passage across the land. By walking the paths of predecessors I contribute to the formation of the paths at the same time as obliterating previous footsteps; as an incomer to this community I absorb and am changed by its culture whilst altering it by my presence here. The nuances of contradiction in the human experience of life are very visible here, but the community survives, just as the surfaces of the land are eroded but the substance of it remains constant and immutable’.
Recent exhibitions have included ‘Collect 2019’ at Saatchi Gallery in London, The Scottish Gallery and ‘Homo Faber’ a group showcase at the Michaelangelo Foundation in Venice.
Vivian Ross-Smith draws from the islands she spends time on, using adapted island imagery to communicate craft, skill, isolation, commitment to place and community. Growing up on Britain’s most remote inhabited island, Fair Isle, Ross-Smith has spent the majority of her life as a part of extreme landscapes and fragile communities. Combining elements of painting, textiles and sculpture, she embeds the traditions of island life into her work. Methods of crafts(wo)manship such as knitting, preserving skins, net making and metal work are utilised to question what it means to be an islander. Taking into account the passing of stories and knowledge through generations, Ross-Smith’s work is an entry point into discussing the depth of understanding communities have toward their place. Ross-Smith is a previous graduate of Grays School of Art in Aberdeen (BA Hons 2009-2013), and is currently studying towards an MA at Glasgow School of Art.
Recent showcases have included solo show ‘Half oot afore i’ da left’ at An Tobar on the Isle of Mull as well as group exhibitions at North Atlantic Lighthouse at Hanstholm in Denmark, the RSA Open in Edinburgh and The Garment Factory in Glasgow.