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Màrt 2022, 14:00 — 19:30
Làthaireachd shaor an-asgaidh
Duilich, chan eil seo ri fhaighinn ach sa Bheurla an-dràsta.
Join us for a gathering of art, food and conversation, from the afternoon into the evening, at Raasay House to celebrate the launch of A Commonplace book of ATLAS.
This book has been created as a marker of a moment in time, compiled over several years, it charts the first eight years of our practice. Edited by Emma Nicolson and Gayle Meikle, the book brings together over 25 contributions containing beautiful illustrations, documentation and rich reflections. It is a history and book to hold dear, and a grounding for ATLAS’s present and future.
The launch event takes us back to Raasay House, a place that features in the book, where we mapped seven Raasay habitats in the project Patterns of Flora in 2015. We will gather around a pot of ATLAS onion soup to listen to readings, (re)encounter past projects, share stories, celebrate our past and think about our future.
Printed as a limited edition of 250 copies, the books will be available to buy at the special price of £18 during the launch. The running order for the day is:
2 – 3.30pm: Reading and discussion with Rural Arts Network, hosted by James Oliver, Emma Nicolson and Gayle Meikle.
3.30 – 4pm: Break and opportunity to listen to recordings*.
4 – 5pm: Soup and speeches, with readings from Yvonne Billimore and Joss Allen, Emma Nicolson and Gayle Meikle.
5 – 6pm: Screening of Woman of The Hill, Hanna Tuulikki (50mins, film details below).
6 ‑7.30pm: Refreshments and opportunity to listen to recordings*.
*Recording from the projects Celestial Radio and Place of Pillars will be available to listen to throughout the day. Details on these projects below.
To help us prepare and keep an eye on numbers please register your attendance in advance
Ferry times:
Sconser to Raasay departs at 1pm, arrives 1.25pm
Raasay to Sconser departs at 6.00pm and 8.30pm.
https://www.calmac.co.uk/sconser-raasay-ferry-winter-timetable-21 – 22- for reference
“Acknowledging relations: dùthchas, seanchas and ethical emplacement”
A reading and discussion of James Oliver's text in a Commonplace Book of ATLAS, 2021. James Oliver (Seumas Olaghair) is a Hebridean Gàidheal and native of the Isle of Skye (an t-Eilean Sgitheanach). This emplacement has informed a life-long and evolving enquiry of practice-as-research and ways of knowing. Initially this was at the nexus of his native culture, language, place-based belonging and configurations of identities; increasingly, this is becoming more about ontologies and practises of emplacement and ethical relations.
Women of the Hill
Commissioned by ATLAS Arts, 2015, Hanna Tuulikki's 'Women of the Hill' is a song-cycle for three female performers, responding to the archeology and topography of High Pasture Cave, an iron-age sacred site dedicated to a matriarchal culture on the Isle of Skye. The performance and resulting film (runtime 50mins), is a work of contemporary archaeo-acoustics, utilizing natural echo-phenomena and mnemonic topographies – the land encoded in the song, the lore embedded in the land – making visible what has lain hidden and audible what has been forgotten.
Celestial Radio
Zoë Walker and Neil Bromwich’s Celestial Radio was a sailing boat launched into Portree’s picturesque bay in 2016, covered in over 60,000 mirrored tiles and broadcasting audio recordings collected by the artists during their time in Skye. The artists worked closely with the local community to put the broadcast together, which featured contributions from 130 people from Skye and the surrounding area. Included in the audio output were contributions from poets, musicians and fishermen
Place of Pillars
Place of Pillars by Ruth Barker was conceived in 2016 as a lament on the crofters’ uprising on the Isle of Skye, a land struggle and fight for fairer land laws that occurred on the island in the 1880s. It was commissioned as part of a wider collaboration between ATLAS Arts and the Staffin Community Trust, and was intended to create a memorial to the uprising through the gathering of local stories and shared memories.
Emma Nicolson is Head of Creative Programmes at the Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh (RBGE) and leads on the development of a new arts strategy, the creation of innovative exhibitions and event opportunities that engage art, nature, science and the environment in the unique context of RGBE. She was the founding director of ATLAS Arts (2010 – 2018).
Gayle Meikle is a Scottish curator and researcher based out of Newcastle Upon Tyne, England. Currently, she is a Lecturer in Contemporary Art Curation at Newcastle University. She specialises in bringing artists, artworks and audiences together to create site-responsive and critically engaged projects. Gayle has over ten years of experience working in the cultural sector and worked with ATLAS Arts from 2013 – 16 and Deveron Projects in 2011.
