Contemporary Arts on the Skye-line

ATLAS is based on the Isle of Skye and Lochalsh, a region of diminishing population, sparse landscapes and resilient social memory. ATLAS was established to create opportunities for participation and engagement by using non-gallery spaces. As an organisation ‘without walls’ we aim to use the landscape as a site for the contemporary visual arts. The emphasis is on art projects that develop new understandings about the role of creative practitioners working in remote rural communities and how that might inform future working in creative practice both regionally and nationally. Artistic investigations of the region are at the core of ATLAS’s current programming and these result in a range of responses. Critical to our work is a local sensitivity; there is a suspicion of being culturally ‘mined’ or anthropologised by ‘outsiders’. It is vital to ensure that the artists we invite to work with us consider the context of their work; the remoteness of Skye requires extended visits and this provides the space to gain a deeper engagement with place.

Developing relationships with the local community, business and cultural sectors are intensive and consuming but this has helped us to identify projects that will contribute to the economic, social and regional challenges of the area. In taking this approach we hope to develop audience development practices for contemporary art, expose the opportunities available here for artists to develop their practice and change perceptions about what contemporary art means.

This has lead to the devising of our first large scale production ‘Bàta Brèagha/Bonnie Boat’, a day of art and events in and around Portree harbour. The focal point will be the ‘Celeste’, a boat adorned by 60,000 mirror tiles, which will broadcast songs and stories that artists Zoe Walker and Neil Bromwich have been collecting on Skye. The Celeste is chameleon vessel, whose appearance changes with the weather, sometimes resembling a gigantic disco ball, sometimes impersonating a miniature stealth boat. We have also programmed a number of parallel events to create a fête by the harbour.

The notion of art in the public realm has been shifting to include new models for change in a time of uncertainty – festivals, the temporal, the long-term developmental and experimental, culture as a participatory shared pleasure. These thoughts form a kind of backdrop to what we are hoping to achieve here on Skye.