Shetland Arts’ Art in the Landscape season opens this week at Bonhoga Gallery with a fantastic opportunity on Saturday to join internationally renowned artist Julie Brook in an outdoor drawing workshop. The all ages workshop Structure, rhythm, form accompanies Julie Brook’s solo Made, Unmade exhibition in the main gallery at Bonhoga which opens this Friday. The Art in the Landscape season is funded by Scottish Natural Heritage and Shetland Arts and is part of Scotland’s Year of Natural Heritage. It also celebrates the Shetland Nature Festival.
Julie Brook is a landscape artist based in Skye and her exhibition is both indoors and outdoors at Bonhoga. Her show indoors is film and photographic work exploring the relationship between suggested and constructed sculptural forms in the desert landscapes of Libya and North West Namibia. This exhibition of work has toured to Shetland from the Dovecot Studios in Edinburgh. Outside the gallery in Weisdale, Julie has constructed a unique site specific piece of land art which will also be open to the public.
Clair Aldington of Shetland Arts, said: “It is a privilege to have an artist of Julie’s standing creating a new work especially for Shetland here at Bonhoga. The workshop she’ll be leading is a great opportunity for folk to work with her to develop their drawing skills, and to hear more about her work in other parts of the world.”
In the other areas of Bonhoga Gallery, local artist and ranger Howard Towll has a selection of sketches and drawings of Shetland’s wildlife and nature. The show, Sketches, is displayed in the Lower Gallery in the café area. Also in the café, the Craft Cabinet is showcasing the work of local furniture maker Cecil Tait in an exhibition entitled Shetlandmade. The Stairwell Gallery is showing Scottish Natural Heritage’s Four Corners photography project, which aimed to get schoolchildren from the four corners of Shetland out exploring their local environments. Pupils from Fair Isle, Foula, Unst and Bressay made visits to their local nature sites (the isles of Fair Isle and Foula, and the National Nature Reserves of Hermaness and Noss), documenting their experiences through photography.
All the above exhibitions run from 15 June – 28 July with a public opening from 6-8pm on Friday 14 July which is open to anyone to attend. Shetland Arts’ Art in the Landscape season will continue with other events over the summer.
