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Of
the Moment by
Neil Firth
Kirkwall
as island capital, Royal Burgh and cathedral city, has its
share of publicly placed art: the ecclesiastical statues of
St Magnus Cathedral and the Bishop's Palace; the civic symbols
of the Market Cross and the town's halberdiers; the gazebo
made from ship's ballast known as Gow's Folly; the busts of
Orkney's famous sons in the County Library, and more recently
four stone reliefs by Frances Pelly near the Shapinsay slipway.
These
are all 'permanently' sited. Their permanence may of course
be relative to the length of time each has been in its environment.
That longevity in turn reflects the public's will to accept
art as part of its communal identity, icons of civic pride.
Certain of "these (The Market Cross and the statue of
the Norse Cleric from the Bishop's Tower) have succeeded in
this to the extent that replicas now occupy the original public
site, while the historical artefacts are safely preserved
in the Cathedral and County Museum. The replicas, invested
with all the potency of the originals, stand as signals for
the continuity of the social landscape.
Permanence
though, in these anthropological terms, can really only be
applied from the past to the present, subject, as are all
man made things, to a limited guarantee of future. That guarantee,
the belief that our activities have a value beyond the present,
maintains our desire to improve, and relies on the notion
that our ameliorations follow an empirical curve of advancement.
This underlies a faith that our descendants will recognise
the worth of our efforts, a hope which acts as a projection
of permanence into the future. However, the heresy involved
in questioning the constancy of these received wisdoms is
the revolution of real change, good or bad, and to the historian
becomes the defining nature of an age.
Earl
Patrick Stewart's political, social and architectural endeavours
were undoubtedly ambitious, and he may even have calculated
within his actions the consequences of failure. Nevertheless
his plans were undertaken with success and permanence as aims.
His finest work, the Earl's Palace, now stands in ruins, testament
to his vaulting greed, and in its current state has a certain
permanence. It is no longer an Earl's Palace, it is what remains
of one. In ruin there seems a durability - a persistence in
not being as it was - being remains.
Art
may aspire to permanence through the definition of timeless
and fundamental human observations, or it may describe the
more particular relationship of the individual to their contemporary
society. Whatever art's purpose, its language when viewed
from posterity will most likely be seen as being of the age
of its making. That future viewpoint may denude it of its
ability to communicate a physical, mental or visual charge,
turning the object from art (something possessed of social
and cultural power) to artefact (the residue of creative energy).
It is conjecture to imagine how our contemporary voice may
later be deciphered, especially when much current art practice
exists in a similar way, occupying the present as factual
object or event, but projecting into the future as a document
of itself.
Against
the chronological sprawl of its backdrop, this exhibition
will pass relatively quickly, becoming part of the building's
historical and archival setting. Many of the works will survive
well beyond their display in the Palace, and while they may
be divorced from the specific context for their creation,
they will remain charged with the investment of skill and
meaning the artist has ascribed them. Perhaps these works
will have marked the space, not in a permanent way but as
a contemporary indication of our relationship to history,
and as a signal of our own aspirations.
Neil
Firth
The Pier Arts Centre
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