Christina Jansen was working from Shetland earlier this week, staying opposite Bains Beach in Lerwick.
Visiting artists and getting to know them, their subject and where they live is a vital relationship. These visits took me to places in Shetland I wouldn’t have otherwise come across, so it was a way of getting to know the island in a more intimate and personal way. I am not revealing which artists I visited in this blog but I would like to share aspects of this magnificent northern landscape. The winter light is particularly intriguing and elusive, anything can change in one minute. I was mostly in the south of Shetland but there are some epic vistas from the far north, including Fethaland. My colleague Ruth Leslie has sewn together just a fraction of my many film clips - there is no story, just the spirit of the place. It begins with a 113mph hurricane… going from Sumburgh in the far south and closes with a glimpse of the far north of the island.
Wool is synonymous with Shetland, and I enjoyed going to see ALLOVER, a Chris Morphet exhibition at the Shetland Museum and Archives, which also houses a superbly detailed social history of the island. The exhibition is made up of a collection of Fair Isle knitwear alongside photographs taken during Morphet’s visit to Shetland in June 1970 and captures the spirit of pre-oil Shetland through Fair Isle knitwear.
Morphet recalls: “I didn’t have a plan, I just wanted to find and photograph these distinctive jumpers. I started in Lerwick and travelled all over Shetland. It was an adventure – simply seeking out anyone wearing Fair Isle.”
The resulting images, many of which are exhibited for the first time, provide a unique social, cultural, and historical record of Shetland in the 1970s. These evocative photographs remain as contemporary and relevant today as they were over half a century ago.
