Reminders   this shivering   plucked vibration   merely flexes   reminicense   fear of absense   remembers a furure   memory is a storehouse     whose stores   are nothing   stored nowhere   it happens without us   we happen without us
Strip Peter White		Reminders Jon Miller

Bowl Peter White. 580x122cm

Echo

The Exhibition runs from the 7th to the 29th of August with a series of events running along side to accompany the show.

This collaborative exhibition grew out of a series of conversations which had as their starting point a particular object - bowl, word, book, garment, landscape. In the course of these conversations, clusters of ideas - memory, identity, presence - and images collected around the objects and these in turn instigated a series of explorations and investigations that eventually found their way back into the work.

The intention is not to have the paintings and poems illustrate each other but rather to consider how techniques and approaches to painting and writing relate and influence each other in a series of complementary works which have culminated in this exhibition.

7th August, 6 - 8pm Opening of ECHO an talla solais
18th August, 7.30pm Artists' Talk, Jon Miller and Peter White talk about their work for this exhibition. Free entry but places limited: please book (01854 612310)
28th August, 12- 4pm Echo Workshop: held as a drop in workshop at an talla solais: Free

Echo ED

You wouldn't find anything better to rest your eyes on than the lovely nymph called Echo. So it runs in the Greek myth of the same name. Echo also had a way with poetry, but was punished (out of jealousy) for all this good stuff by the loss of her voice, and was only able to repeat the words of others. As if that wasn't enough she then fell for Narcissus, who was so full of himself he couldn't appreciate a good thing when he saw one. Echo pined away and the trace of her voice hangs on the wind in the glens and valleys.

The message of this powerful voice on the wind haunts the new exhibition mounted by Peter White and Jon Miller at Ullapool's endlessly innovative An Talla Solais community gallery. White and Miller have collaborated on a series of ideas connected with Echo's meaning and produced two skeins of parallel work which explore not just the ideas but the nature of the two mediums. The two worlds connect, comment and intrigue in equal measure.

White presents an onslaught of his theme of presence and absence. Echo is at once present but not real - or is she real but not present? In a series of exquisite and meticulous graphite drawings, the exhibition kicks off with a stark set of questions. The drawings come from a study White has made of prison ID photos, taken from Auschwitz prisoners as well as inmates of Russian and Cambodian prisons. The point is exacting. These are faces beautifully executed but androgenous and without personality. They are beautiful and yet they are nothing. They are sharply sad but so lovingly put to us. Each carries with it a blank but rich personality. We know nothing of their history but yet the question of who they are lingers and probes.

The theme of present yet not there reverberates round the rooms to follow. In apparently stark contrast there are enormous works on board painted with acrylic, wax, oil, chalk, rivers of solvent. The colour is densely beautiful and disturbing, as if straight from the West Highland landscape. There are enormous bowls, a gigantic book and what seems to be a peasant smock but is a work from the imagination. Here the message questions urgently. The bowls are set in the middle of the composition and speak eloquently of their contents. In all cases they are empty but in some cases the glimpsed interior is a rich world,, in others we are not allowed to glimpse it. The chips and blemishes seem to draw us more deeply into their space. None of these are drawn from life. In all cases these vessels are profoundly physical and real in their detail but speak beyond reality to the subconscious and the placement of self within it. Some, I might feel. are "myself", some are certainly "another".

White's great book is like a piece of organic landscape and drags with it another theme - the nature of history. Is it contained within the book "like a turf", just as it is contained in the earth in Miller's poetry? White plays with vessels in all the objects, it seems - everything has a beautiful skin - whether bowl, hat, book or smock. These are pale, vibrant and shocking husks with rich interiors that draw us in but elude us. Aged cotton and creamy vellum sit against rich ochres, red shades, hints of smoke-filled blues and greens. "Make no mistake you will be mistaken" says Miller later in the exhibition. Some of the objects hide behind prison grey triptych doors to be opened by us to reveal a world beyond or perhaps within. We are invited to enter into White's vessels and identify but find we can't, we are led beyond. Here and there we find a trail of wax inscribed tiles with fragments of words and half thoughts hovering round the central themes.

The main body of poetry comes near the end, when we enter a dimly lit room and have our sight tested. The poems are mounted optician-like in black-rimmed light boxes of different shapes. The themes already in our heads from White's visuals start to erupt into multiple metaphor and walls of beautiful poetry. Miller describes "an endless falling into grace as you refill the vessel to the brim ..". His poems join White's artworks in "an archaeology of light and memory". He talks of "our clutch at memory" just as White seems to ask if we can ever anchor what we see and if we do will there be any reality to it.

Miller points to meaning in his chosen objects and drags in history as he goes. The tombstones of the stonemason rest on an "earth full of meaning". He describes "a world uncurling on the iris" just as meaning hovers on the precise rims of White's vessels. We search and sift the poems, as Miller says, "hungry for echo" - which we are richly provided with. But can we pin it or ourselves down, he seems to ask "in our shallow occupation of the air, we vanish into what memory we inhabit." He goes on, "we wade waist deep in whatever fell through the riddle, whatever gathers and runs before us, whatever makes its shapes and mouths at us then vanishes." Or "memory is a storehouse, whose stores are nothing stored nowhere". Presence or absence?

We think of White's vast bowls when Miller describing a clay pot, questions "As if a hole in the earth stares back at you". We hear the echo from inside the pot itself, as he writes "like your voice (or your life) it is mainly space". The pot, he says, gives us "a hold, a grip on here and now". We remember how the physicality of White's rimmed pots have earthed us in a contemplation of the other yet are so intensely present and physical. In one poem that seems exceptionally mature, "The Word Unspoken" Miller traces the creation of the word and its passage through body and brain to its final triumph and expression. It moves out "feathers shedding in the fall". Miller tells us it is "hungry for echo".

The voice of the beautiful Echo hangs more clearly than elsewhere on the glens and valleys of North West Scotland. This intriguing exhibition and dense collaboration spell out a "dark grammar" (Miller) and capture the spirit of this elusive sound more than much of what is on offer. The journey through the richly decorated rooms yields a rare path of enjoyment, questioning and fertile thought that lingers like her voice on the wind.

Estelle Daniel

The exhibition will tour to An Lanntair, Stornoway in November 2010 and then to Taigh Chearsabhagh, North Uist and The kilmorack Gallery, Beauly in March/April 2011. Don't miss it.

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Whichever we do, we require gallery sitters. Our biggest expenditure in our years in the old library was on paid sitters, when our voluntary sitters were unavailable If you think you would like to help us by being on our list to gallery-sit occasionally, then we would be delighted to hear from you. Please contact Ailsa on 612288 and give us your details. Thank you.