Everything connects in Inverness’s fertile arts scene. Or at least that’s how it feels talking with those running the assorted visual arts institutions and spaces in what has long been regarded as the Highland capital. At the centre of this is Inverness Museum and Galleries (IMAG), the major public space that has just opened the Fleming-Wyfold Foundation supported Glasgow Girls and Boys exhibition. This runs alongside the gallery’s permanent collection of historical works.
Steeped in history as IMAG is, there is a welter of contemporary artistic activity stretching throughout the Highlands. While Inverness itself is a relatively small city, the catchment area for cultural provision is, as one curator observes, as big as Belgium. The European comparison is apt. While younger art spaces are informed by received notions of more traditional approaches, most look beyond to something more modern.
This is as much the case in Highland Print Studio as it is in WASPS studio spaces at Inverness Creative Academy, which houses the artist led Circus Artspace as well as community based photography initiative, The Inverness Darkroom. It is the case too in the recently opened Browns Gallery. Even the Art Society of Inverness, founded in 1944 continues to look forward even as it preserves its rich history.
As for IMAG, with a history that dates back to 1881, it too protects its collection of Highland and Jacobite paintings and historic Stuart portraits that sit alongside more contemporary works. This is symbolised by the various redevelopments the centre has undergone since taking up residence in a purpose built complex in 1963. The first of these in 1982 saw a café and new galleries built, while a £1.3m redesign in 2006 and 2007 saw it rebuilt and repurposed for the future. Now under the management of the High Life Highland, the charity set up in 2011 by The Highland Council to develop and promote the region’s cultural provision, IMAG’s reach is necessarily wide.
“I suppose you could say our remit is to be fairly mainstream,”says IMAG’s Visual Arts curator Cathy Shankland. “We try to bring art to the Highlands that people would otherwise have to travel to Edinburgh, Glasgow or London to see. We've had Robert Mapplethorpe, Grayson Perry, Matisse, all sorts of things like that, but then we mix that up with local things. We just want people to have really quality art on their doorstep, so that it's part of our communal life rather than having to go somewhere else to see it.
“So we try to be all things to all people, and of course, that's obviously an impossible task. But what we try to do is to bring quality to the art galleries, and to show a variety of different art. We work a lot with the National Galleries, and do a lot of the things that they're doing, but we also we have an experimental space as well, where we take more risks. Our audiences who use the gallery could be tourists or they could be the local community.”
The local community too seems to be visibly active on the local arts scene. This is certainly the case at Highland Print Studio, which since opening in the mid 1980s has offered affordable printmaking facilities for working artists and enthusiastic amateurs alike.
“It was set up by a group of teachers who all had an interest in printmaking,” says HPS Director Alison McMenemy. “They initially rented the space, and eventually got funding to employ a member of staff, and it’s just grown and grown over the years.
“I think the important thing is that anyone, absolutely anyone, regardless of experience, can come in, learn printmaking techniques, be creative and work in an environment that is supportive and welcoming.”
More recently, Inverness Creative Academy was set up by WASPS (Workshop & Artists Studio Provision Scotland Ltd) to provide much needed studio space for Highland artists in two redeveloped category B listed buildings. Since opening in February 2022, ICA has provided thirty-two artist spaces and fifty-four offices, as well as meeting rooms and exhibition spaces.
Tenants include community run photography initiative, The Inverness Darkroom. This was set up by photographers Matt Sillars, Rachel Fermi and Brian McIntosh, with the centre’s work feeding in to FLOW Photofest,, a biennial event founded in 2017. FLOW events have been held at various venues across the Highlands, including Highland Print Studio, IMAG, and Inverness’ theatre and film complex, Eden Court. FLOW’s 2023 edition is set to run throughout September.
Also based at WASPS is artist led collective, Circus Artspace. Founded in 2019, this committee-led initiative has run a series of offsite exhibitions in temporary venues around Inverness. This includes Eden Court, where Circus Artspace is currently hosting an exhibition by Fionn Duffy.
“I guess the thinking initially was to have an artist led space like you get in other cities that does grassroots, DIY stuff,” says Circus Artspace committee member and co-founder, Kirsten Body. “You don't see a lot of the work that we're interested in, like installation, performance, and artists’ film, in Inverness, and we want to support emerging artists doing that sort of contemporary work in an inclusive and experimental space.”
Eden Court is also currently hosting an exhibition by Ukrainian artist Oleksandra Novatska. More established spaces include the Castle Gallery, which has been open since 2001. More recently,
Browns Gallery opened in 2022 as a sister space to the original Browns Gallery, established in Tain by artist Gordon Brown in 1993. Since then, Browns has shown works by established names such as John Bellany and John Byrne alongside emerging artists based in the Highlands.
“We bought the building four years ago,” Brown explains. “It’s an old office building which we’ve developed into this really elegant space. It’s an ambitious project, and I think we needed to spread our wings a bit, and reengage with a wider group of artists in the Highlands and Islands. We’re still very much in our infancy, but I really want the gallery to develop an international profile.”
Outside Inverness, however, all is not rosy. Thurso Gallery in Caithness, set up in the 1980s as the Swanson Gallery, and based in Thurso Library is about to be closed by High Life Highland due to rising operating costs. This leaves a void in the region’s cultural life that will be hard to fill.
“We just need to be recognised as a community,” says Shankland. “The Highlands often get overlooked in favour of the central belt in all sorts of ways, not just in art. So we just have to try and keep our end of it and say, look, we’ve got galleries here, we've got art here. We can do things here as well. It’s not just about the central belt.”
Highland Life
Art Society of Inverness – http://www.artinverness.com/www.artinverness.com
Browns Gallery - 81A Castle Street, Inverness - Ian Westacott – Meetings with Trees until 27 May -https://www.browns-gallery.com/
Castle Gallery, 43 Castle Street, Inverness – Jenny McLaren and Anna de Ville – Fieldworks until May 27. https://castlegallery.co.uk/https://castlegallery.co.uk
Circus Artspace presents I can see your bones but I don’t know how to read them by Fionn Duffy at Eden Court, Inverness, 18-25 May.https://www.circus.scot/
Eden Court Gallery, Bishops Road, Inverness – Oleksandra Novatska – Faraway, 1-26 May. www.eden-court.co.uk/the-gallery
Highland Print Studio, 20 Bank Street, Inverness - https://highlandprintstudio.co.uk/https://highlandprintstudio.co.uk
Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, Castle Wynd, Inverness,- Glasgow Girls and Boys until 15 July. Leon Patchett, An Inspired Scavenger - Re-forming the natural world – adventures in wood and found objects, 7 October – 25 November.
https://www.highlifehighland.com/inverness-museum-and-art-gallery/
The Inverness Darkroom, Midmills Building, Stephen's Street, Inverness, IV2 3J https://www.theinvernessdarkroom.org.uk/about-2/https://www.theinvernessdarkroom.org.uk/about-2/
FLOW Photofest, Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, 7- 30 September. Details of other venues tbc. http://www.flowphotographyblog.wordpress.com/www.flowphotographyblog.wordpress.com
Thurso Gallery, Thurso, Caithness - Mark Lomax - Lost Threads and Severed Ties until 1 July - https://www.highlifehighland.com/thurso-art-gallery/
WASPS, Midmills Building, Stephen's Street, Inverness- https://www.waspsstudios.org.uk/space/inverness-creative-academy/-
Scottish Art News, July 2023
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