Mary Beith - Obituary

 Mary Beith

The journalist, writer and historian Mary Beith has died peacefully in her home in Melness, Sutherland, after a short illness.  She was surrounded by close family and had exemplary care from professional cancer nurses.

Mary displayed a prodigious talent for passionate, informed writing and meticulous research from an early age.  From a fledgling journalist working for the Bournemouth Times in the late 1950s and early 1960s she graduated, in 1970, to The Sunday People, and was based in Manchester. Mary had met and married fellow journalist Roger Scott in 1961 while living in Bournemouth but the marriage was not to last. 

It was during this period that Mary was named Campaigning Journalist of the Year for her work on The People's ‘Smoking Beagles’ story. The photograph that accompanied by the story has assumed a highly familiar visual status.  At the time (26^th January, 1975) Mary wrote:

…the chain-smoking beagles have to puff away relentlessly. As the stubs burn out, new cigarettes are promptly inserted by lab assistants in the grotesque “smoking masks” attached to these unhappy animals. Some of the dogs go on smoking for up to three years. Then they are killed. All, of course, in the name of research. In this case research into the human pastime known as smoking. It is part of tests being carried out by Britain’s largest company, Imperial Chemical Industries, on their new “safe cigarette…

In his British Journalism Review, the historian Roy Greenslade, Professor of Journalism, City University, London, cites Mary’s article in exemplary terms:

….under Geoff Pinnington’s editorship, one of The People’s most famous investigations – into cruelty at a vivisection laboratory – was published to widespread acclaim. Reporter Mary Beith, working under cover at the lab, smuggled in a camera to snap an iconic photograph of a row of dogs hooked up to machines that forced them to inhale supposedly “safe” non-nicotine cigarettes. The “smoking beagles” image is one of the most memorable ever published by a newspaper.

Mary also undertook various other under-cover assignments elsewhere in England, and in Northern Ireland. However, Mary always insisted that her undercover work on the mistreatment of the elderly chained semi-permanently to radiators in psychiatric hospitals was more important than her work on animal cruelty.

While covering stories in Northern Ireland she was feared dead when the Belfast’s Europa Hotel was bombed (on one of numerous occasions) – but she was discovered safe and well having slept through the entire incident. A story she was covering about a young IRA member who wished to leave the organisation resulted in her being recalled to Manchester after the paper received death threats about Mary (one of only a very few female British reporters working in the province at that time.)

It is important to emphasise that despite its tabloid format, established only a year before the Beagles story, the People was highly respected newspaper, renowned for its campaigning and investigative work. The fact that Mary’s Journalist of the Year award was presented to her by the then Prime Minister Ted Heath, only goes to underline the importance of the publication and Mary’s great skills as a reporter.

Mary’s full-time career as a reporter was cut short in 1979 by meningitis that proved almost fatal. In the early ‘eighties she began contributing free-lance to The Scotsman under the benign, indulgent and affectionate watch of the features editor, Jim Seaton. Mary contributed regularly on a wide range of subjects – her scope was considerable and her contributions "invaluable". Mary was asked to do a regular column for the feature pages, but was unenthusiastic about the demands imposed by a regular column. She was by then living in her caravan in Midfield, Melness on the North Coast and described herself as the "hack in the shack".

The caravan was sited in close proximity to some extraordinary scenery and beaches and there were regular visitors and respectful, affectionate neighbours – a small but supportive community into which Mary fitted with ease, grace and gratitude.  The writers George Gunn and Lesley Riddoch, then married, were frequent guests. Despite the air of semi-permanent chaos (a broken down washing machine or a leaky roof) there was always a smile, a warm welcome with coffee, biscuits and, often, something a little stronger. Visiting Mary there among the heirloom furniture and numerous books on a vast array of subjects, one’s eye was inexorably drawn to a photograph of a young Mary Beith – a real stunner with dark hair, beautiful well-proportioned face and as, was the fashion of the time, great legs shown off to great effect by her mini skirt.

Mary found her forte in researching and writing about local folklore, history, archaeology, the Gaelic language and traditional medicine. Her Healing Threads published in 1995 by Birlinn, is a popular classic and has been reprinted several times. Here, Mary was at great pains to contextualise the traditional medicinal cures and lore of the Highland Gael within the wider context of a pan-British and pan-European medicinal culture. Mary was also a regular columnist for the West Highland Free Press, contributing a column on medicinal plants, lore and mythology. She also contributed a learned essay to the publication A’Craobh (The Tree) that explained the origins and uses of the Gaelic tree alphabet. Probably because of her growing number of grandchildren she become interested in writing for children  and  An t-Ubhal Seunta (The Magic Apple) was published in Gaelic in 2009.

She is survived by her children Alison, Andrew and Fiona and eight grand-children.

Mary Beith

Born Clapham, May 22nd 1938 (to Frederick George Beith and Kathleen Stuart)

Died, Melness, Sutherland, 13 May 2012

Pete Horobin: DATA

Pete Horobin: DATA

Street Level Photoworks

Glasgow

Until 3 June

The artist, who for the purposes of this project and exhibition is known as Pete Horobin, has appeared in other guises and with other names. Horobin has changed his name and, more crucially perhaps, his artistic persona as well as his modus operandi every decade since he began practising as a full-time artist. Thus, the identities of ‘Marshall Anderson’ and ‘Peter Haining’ have also served to signify a shift in this practitioner’s approach to art making.

 ‘Marshall Anderson’ underlined the artist’s activities as a writer, critic and ceramist in the 1990s, while in the period from 2000 to 2005, under the persona of ‘Peter Haining’, the artist concentrated on documenting and researching ‘outsider’ art, such as that of Angus MacPhee, the celebrated Hebridean ‘weaver of grass’.

Horobin is an important artist who is finally beginning to gain some of the recognition his work deserves – and demands. A product of the post-Fluxus generation, Horobin adopts a number of tropes made familiar by Joseph Beuys. Principal among these is the idea that the life of the artist and the process of living is, in itself, a form of art – a work in progress in which anything and everything associated with the artist becomes legitimate artistic material.

Beuys famously created ‘Life Course Work Course’ a documentation and chronology in which he described his birth, in 1921, as “Kleve exhibition of a wound drawn together with an adhesive bandage”.

This show, which is set out in a broad chronology, demonstrates Horobin’s meticulous self –documentation under the rubric of the acronym DATA: ‘Daily Action Time Archive’.  Horobin produced an A4 template that he completed for every day of the 1980s. Nothing is spared his attention, including defecation, ‘solo sex’ and even blood pressure.

Although much of the material is mundane, as one might expect, it has a cumulative effect not least because of the artist’s total commitment to his own self-historicisation. Data becomes information and is thus transformed from bare fact into narrative.

Horobin also saved and collected everyday materials such as newspaper cuttings, receipts, tickets and other ephemera that he forensically stored in uniform plastic wallets. One example, from 24th January, 1980 shows a receipt from the now defunct supermarket chain William Low, superimposed on a newspaper cutting containing a photograph with the caption ‘The Arts Council gallery in Charlotte Square, Edinburgh…to be turned into office space.’

Of his Scottish fellow artists, on 25th February 1981 Horobin writes: “…they are apathetic, lazy, non-communicative, disinterested, unquestioning, non co-operative, self-centred, narrow-minded, dogmatic, unexciting, unadventurous and unimaginative….” Perhaps such strongly held beliefs go some way to explaining Horobin’s lack of exposure and his desire to make connections elsewhere, such as with the European and American avant-garde.

While revealing a deep integrity Horobin’s stance must increasingly feel uncomfortable or at the very least ambiguous now that he is gradually being inexorably assimilated into the ‘canon’ of established acceptability.

George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary

George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary

Collins Gallery

Glasgow

Until 21 April

GIVEN George Wyllie’s prolific, unusual and popularly accessible artistic career, the title of this show – which also, sadly, marks the final exhibition in the Collins Gallery’s 39-year existence – is apt.

Wyllie – who was born in Shettleston, Glasgow in 1921 – had no formal training as an artist and for many years he pursued a career as an exciseman. Wyllie is a man of prodigious talent with a special ability to communicate with audiences of all levels and backgrounds.  A talented musician, a practical and intellectual joker, an artistic prankster, a jester, an unabashed self-publicist – Wyllie is all of these and more. Yet, underlying his humour, this very Glaswegian extrovert harbours an agenda of high seriousness – moral, aesthetic and political. With typical aplomb Wyllie devised the term ‘Scul?tor’ to describe himself and his approach.   The coinage denotes the questioning that lies, necessarily and literally, at the centre of his work.

Wyllie’s talent lies in his ability to fuse complex ideas (such as the politics of industrial decline, economics, kinetics, engineering and much else) with eye-catching imagery, large-scale publicity stunts and headline-grabbing projects. These have included the very public burning of a life-size straw locomotive suspended from a giant Clydeside crane and the launching of a crewed, scaled-up paper boat in Glasgow, Antwerp, London and New York.  As he sailed into New York, Wyllie bore a copy of Adam Smith’s ‘Theory of Moral Sentiment’, the Enlightenment genius’ counterpart to his later work, ‘The Wealth of Nations’.  Smith’s work argues that true wealth lies in the human imagination. In many of his endeavours Wyllie was accompanied and supported by his late wife, Daphne.

As with so many artists in their early careers Wyllie was supported, vigorously and whole- heartedly, by Richard Demarco who included Wyllie in a group show as early as 1966. Under Demarco’s auspices Wyllie met the pre-eminent German artist Joseph Beuys whom Wyllie visited at his Düsseldorf studio and home in 1981. In the same year Wyllie (accompanied by the artist Dawson Murray) helped Beuys install his most significant work made in Scotland, ‘The Poorhouse Doors’.

In 2006 Wyllie donated his voluminous and valuable archive to the University of Strathclyde (the institution has been a long term supporter of Wyllie’s endeavours). It is from this rich and fascinating collection of writings, photographs, artworks, objects and paraphernalia that this show is drawn.

Wyllie’s status is largely under-estimated by many in the ‘art establishment’.  Given his long association with the Collins Gallery and university, it seems perverse and shameful that the university authorities have chosen to close this valuable and highly respected venue (which was set in motion by enthusiastic voluntary idealism in the early Seventies) in a misguided attempt to cut costs. 

It’s an irony that would not be missed by figures such as Beuys, Adam Smith and Wyllie himself.

Angus Reid: 6 Peaks Axolotl Gallery Edinburgh

Angus Reid: 6 Peaks

Axolotl Gallery

Edinburgh

Until 7 April, 2012

The work of Edinburgh-based poet, filmmaker and artist Angus Reid deserves to be better known. This installation (at the Axolotl Gallery which is, sadly, soon to close) presents a journey – emotional, physical and spiritual. At its core is the idea of love, loss and redemption.

Lasy year, ccompanied by his teenage daughter, Reid traversed all six peaks of the Pentland Hills, which run in a north-east to south-west axis for around 10 miles, due south of Edinburgh. Although the walk itself was arduous, it was neither dangerous nor overwhelming – and was completed in around 4 or 5 hours.

But unlike the Munro-bagging, sporty mentality of most competitive hill walkers, Reid’s purpose was altogether different – and exceptional.

The notion of poetry framing and informing landscape (and vice versa)  is not new – indeed, the idea arguably lay at the core of Romanticism as espoused by Wordsworth and Coleridge in their famous walks in Cumbria and elsewhere. Somehow the process of walking became poetic and, in a sense, the landscape breathed poetry into being. The peaks, valleys, wind, rain and sunshine somehow generated the stuff of metre, rhythm, rhyme and syntax.

Reid’s poetic form is unusual, if not unique. Each of his seven 140-syllable sonnets has been literally bisected by a verticle typographical line, using left and right justification. These sonnets form part of a much longer series a book of days in the tradition of Petrarch.

The first lines of 118/365 read:

             It took six peaks to walk away from                  you

and each was a hard                climb in the fierce wind

         the topography                of a changing heart

                 the making                of a distance between us

The process of writing is thus inextricably linked with walking, thinking – and feeling. The landscape moulds the poet’s thoughts and the thoughts become bound to the path he is walking.

As if to emphasise this, the name of each peak – Caerketton, Allermuir, Castle Law, Turn House, Carn Ethy –is embedded as an mesostic, in highlighted font, within the text of each poem.  The last peak is Scald Law. It may be toponymical happenstance but the Old Norse (and contemporary Icelandic) term for ‘poet’ is skald.

Reid underscores his approach with bold, stark, stylised silhouettes of the Pentland peaks. (It’s worth remembering that, etymologically, the root of ‘topography’ is ‘writing about place’).  Although formalised, these hills are recognisable and resonate with reality.  Around the walls of this exquisitely proportioned Georgian drawing room, image follows word, just as thought follows form.

Reid gave a bold and moving performance of this quiet, elegiac, celebratory sequence that was full of bardic dignity and lyrical poise.

These were not merely spoken words but images, thoughts, feelings and ideas – merged and forged in a walk through the poet’s mind.

George Wyllie: A Life less Ordinary

  (NB. Below is the text of a press release from The University of Strathclyde/The Collins Gallery. A critical review will follow in due course)

                         

10 March – 21 April (closed 6 – 9 April)

Tue–Fri ,10-5pm, Sat, 12-4pm

Collins Gallery

University of Strathclyde

22 Richmond Street

Glasgow G1 1XQ

t: 0141 548 2558

e: collinsgallery@strath.ac.uk

w: www.collinsgallery.strath.ac.uk

ONE of Scotland’s most prolific and influential artists is to be celebrated in a major new exhibition at Strathclyde University’s Collins Gallery

The work of George Wyllie, best known for his Straw Locomotive and Paper Boat public artworks, is being celebrated throughout 2012 – his 90th birthday year – under the banner The Whysman Festival.

The festival launches on March 10 with an exhibition at the Collins Gallery, George Wyllie: A Life Less Ordinary.

Comprising sketches, photographs, posters, notebooks, letters and project worksheets. It will focus on some of the treasures from the extensive archive gifted by George Wyllie to the University of Strathclyde Archives.

Alongside source material for the Paper Boat, the Straw Locomotive and A Day Down a Goldmine, are numerous references to smaller scale exhibits and events, supported by excerpts from a transcript of a comprehensive, taped interview undertaken by Jenny Simmons for the British Library Sound Archive between 2003 & 2004.

Here, Wyllie’s reflections offer an intimate insight into a “life less ordinary” and vividly illustrates the philosophy of a “renaissance man” whose joy of living coupled with a ferocious drive, led him to execute some of the most ambitious, unusual and accessible contemporary art projects seen in Scotland over the past 45 years.

As well as works on paper, the gallery will be screening Murray and Barbara Grigor’s 1990 film The Why?s Man film, made in collaboration with Wyllie.

Visitors will also have the opportunity to view artworks by both Wyllie and members of his family, on public display for the first time.

The long and fruitful relationship between George Wyllie and the University began in 1976 when just two years after the Collins Gallery was opened, Wyllie mounted Scul?ture, his first ever, major solo exhibition. 

Visited by American kinetic artist George Rickey, this led to George’s first residency in the USA. 

It was followed by two further one-man shows, A Way with the Birds, in 1981, and A Cosmic Voyage in 2005, as well as various displays of small sculptural works in thematic and group shows. 

In acknowledgement of his contributions to Scottish art, Wyllie was awarded an Honorary D’ Litt by Sir Graham Hills and later, in 1996, was invited by Sir John Arbuthnott  to present an opening address at Strathclyde University’s Bi-Centenary dressed as its founder, John Anderson.

He is represented in the University’s Fine Art Collections by small drawings, a spire and most famously, Monument for Maternity, sited in the Rottenrow Gardens during Sir Andrew Hamnett’s term as Principal.

George Wyllie: A Life less Ordinary will sadly represent the last ever exhibition at the Collins Gallery before it is closed down in May 2012, but his archive will be accessible thereafter, at the University’s Archive.

For more information on this exhibition or hi-res images, please contact Laura Hamilton on 0141 548 2558 or email: collinsgallery@strath.ac.uk

The Whysman Festival (www.whysman.co.uk) has been organised by The Friends of George Wyllie, a group set up by his family and friends to celebrate, protect and promote his work in his 90th year.

For general press enquiries on The Whysman Festival, contact Jan Patience on 07802 427207/friendsofgeorgewyllie@gmail.com

Anna Barriball Fruitmarket Gallery Edinburgh

Anna Barriball

Fruitmarket Gallery

Edinburgh

Until 9 April, 2012

It’s not easy to label the work of Anna Barriball (who was born in Plymouth in 1972) but the term ‘interventionist’ seems appropriate – at least in respect of the majority of her drawings, sculptures, films and installations.

The image of a four-panel, domestic interior door lies encased in a glazed frame tilted against a large white expanse of wall.  Again the search for terminology seems necessary and what comes to mind is frottage because the ‘image’ is in fact a direct impression of the door created by intense and painstaking rubbing with graphite on paper. It’s what some theorists call an ‘index’, in that it has a direct relationship to the object which it represents.  

It’s an arresting statement: this shiny, shimmering, slate grey mass. It turns out that this is one of Barriball’s favoured techniques. Elsewhere there are large, dark crumpled forms that lean into the corners of the gallery. The presence of these bulky grey forms is vaguely disquieting, threatening even. On closer observations these are revealed as rolled paper, again painstakingly rubbed and covered with graphite – a combination of drawing and sculpture.

Elsewhere, ‘Soundproof’ comprises a series of repeated forms, again drawn in pencil, that have been stencilled onto the gallery walls. The patterning is geometric, replicated, ordered and the title perhaps derives from the idea that acoustic tiles have been used as the stencil.

Another of Barriball’s interventions consists of a series of framed photographs where all elements except a single window have been obscured by the card mount.  These ‘found’ images are used by Barriball to convey similarities and commonalties but they also point to another aspect of her work: obscuration and alteration. 

‘Breaths’, from 2002, comprises thirty-six found photographs that have been mounted as a single work. Here Barriball’s intercession comes in the form of blots of ink that have been blown with a straw or tube to partially cover the image. Although the images themselves are ‘found’, they have been selected nevertheless. The small, square black-and-white snapshots with serrated edges show a family holidaying, perhaps in Italy, in the ‘fifties or ‘sixties. Barriball’s spidery shapes somehow deface and distort these memories five or six decades after the fact.

Returning to the theme of windows, ‘Mirror Window Wall’ plays with the idea of representation, illusion and reality.   These are not – as they initially appear – a set of four windows but a series of sixteen framed rubbings of brick walls; the gaps between the frames create the illusion of astragals. Here the silver paper has been abraded by the surface of the wall, capturing the bricks (and the pointing between them) in a crude form of relief and indentation.

Those who strive to extract meaning, symbolic, metaphoric or otherwise from Barriball’s work with look in vain, for in its simplest sense, the medium (and hence, Barriball’s way of working) is the message. That message is about the artist’s joy, her facility in the use of materials – as well as the way that she deftly defies the now apparently defunct categories ‘drawing’ and ‘sculpture’.

Hamish Henderson - The Making of the Poet

This review was of Hamish Henderson  - The Making of the Poet (Volume One of Timothy Neat's biography) was first published in 2007. It has recently been re-published on the revamped Northings online journal.

http://northings.com/2007/12/16/hamish-henderson