About the 3 islands
Putting 20 artists from various cultural, geographical and creative backgrounds onto a remote island can provided a unique insight into contemporary creative thoughts and processes. What happens when a Cuban Contortionist meets a South African Sculptor on a small Scottish island? It’s anyone’s guess really, but one thing is clear, that by putting creative people in new surroundings they are inspired to work in new ways and the results are often fascinating.
3 Islands takes this idea forward in an exploration of ideas. People and place intertwine in weird and wonderful ways, observing and creating from unique perspectives and providing fascinating insights in the process.
But the story doesn’t stop there. 3 Islands is in fact part of a much bigger picture – a brotherhood stretching round the globe. When Robert Loder and Sir Anthony Caro, initiated the first Triangle workshop in an inspired move, they could not have known that it’s success would take it to over twenty countries around the world from Austrailia to Venezula. 3 Islands is just one of the latest workshops started under Triangle International.
The story is made all the more remarkable by the fact that the principles underpinning Triangle workshops – in their freedom of expression – very often work in direct contradiction to the controlling powers of the countries involved. The fact that individuals have worked to overcome such challenges and run Triangle workshops in adverse conditions is testament to strength of the original idea and what it means to people.
Nicola Gear, founder of the 3 Islands:
To get the best from a workshop is to be at a moment in your work when you are poised between boredom with past work and vertigo from looking down numerous potential pathways zigzagging off into … nowhere. I had met Rober Loder in 1997 while living in London and was in this state of suspended animation, trying to raise funds to have an exhibition on public transport buses in Johannesburg. After the experience of working in South Africa, London seemed tame and I was having difficulty making work from an isolated studio. Having met Robert and shown him my work, I got the opportunity to go to a workshop in Zimbabwe and suddenly found myself amongst the most varied artists imaginable, all coming from such different starting points and cultures and yet all making work somehow and I realised that the only important thing was to get on with it….
When I moved from London to Glasgow in 2001, I decided to try to start a workshop in Scotland. Robert Loder and I had talked about it in principle and he had offered to help me. At First, for me it was a thinly disguised excuse to travel around the Western Isles, but I started meeting people who seemed so keen on the idea that the momentum soon took over. Meeting Anne Mackensie at Taigh Chearsabhabh, the arts centre in Lochmaddy North Uist was the moment when a working group started to form, and we were soon joined by Andy Mackinnon, Ian Stephen and Shauna MacMullen; the first workshop was up and running. At this stage it was only imagined as a ‘one off’, but all that enthusiasm, all that work, all those people who became involved soon made for the germ of an idea to set up a network of our own in Scotland; to start with three islands and three different consecutive workshops and see if this involved more people and created more projects thus evolving over time.
After the experience of Comhla 2003, the first Scottish TAT workshop, I was joined by a band of artists all keen that the energy created in North Uist should continue and therefore 3 islands appeared on the horizon. This kind of project consists of a particular kind of energy; it cannot be defined by the usual criteria of polished CVs and bodies of work fully formed and created for the gallery context. It is more loosely formed and the people who benefit and contribute are working either in a particular way or are at that open-ended stage of development. So, contributing in often curious ways were Norman Chalmers, the irrepressible poltergeist-like musician and photographer, Ian Stephen, ex- coastguard, with his love of any islands from aboard any boat, Puck Kirkpatrick, the eco cowboy from Stromness with his encyclopedic knowledge of all people, all gossip and all fish in the Orkney Islands, Anna Gray with experience of attending a workshop in New York and her untiring ability to keep writing funding proposals through the night, and wild camp in deep heather to make morning meetings in Ullapool.
As 3 Islands has gathered momentum others have started making their mark; after Tanera Mor 2007 Misha Somerville came up with the idea of the website as a kind of glue to stick the disparate threads together and Steve Husband has applied an unconventional kind of engineering to all sorts of physical restraints that could have scuppered having workshops on remote islands, bringing with him an eccentric collection of tools, skills and vehicles. We are all artists, and so these skills have produced events that must seem uneven in concept and unpolished at times, but the idea of keeping them as artist-led has preserved that ingredient, difficult to define, that feeds our work and gives it the opportunity to grow.