Scottish Contemporary Fibre Art by Louise Barrington Explores the Landscape of Orkney Through Sculpture and Textiles

Louise Barrington graduated from both the Slade School of Fine Art within the sculpture department and Central Saint Martins where she practised Textile Design. She now lives and works in the remote and mythical landscape of the Orkney Islands, where she is originally from.

Barrington’s work begins with a series of automatic drawings. When studying in London she would use childhood memories of summer in Orkney as the starting point. These hazy half-memories, clouded by indecipherable shapes and flashes of colour, would form the basis of a poetic language of line, colour and form. In this way, Barrington allows the subconscious to illustrate an experience of subtle features of an environment, creating a sense of place experienced within a landscape.

Barrington then develops this language through sculpture. Her work combines textile techniques such as embroidery, patchwork and beading, with three-dimensional sculpture in her conceptual expression of the landscape.

Re-imagining the Landscape

The landscape of Orkney is fundamental to the aesthetic of Barrington’s art. She recently completed a PGDip in Island Studies at the University of the Highlands and Islands, which enriched her artistic practice and strengthened her identity as an Islander.

‘I am one of the founding members of Móti collective, a group of artists who exhibit together. Living in such a remote place it can be difficult to exchange ideas and creative processes, so we support each other in this way. Orkney’s beautiful landscape, history, folklore and myths deeply impact all of us in the collective.

The landscape has had a significant impact on me, the open spaces of Orkney are full of energy. The quality of light has greatly influenced my restrained colour palette, especially at ‘in between’ times – twilight and dusk. To me, the landscape is poetic and feminine, and my use of colour and fluidity aims to capture this.’

This colour palette is evident in Barrington’s works from her 2017 show ‘Shaping the Void’ at The Pier Arts Centre in Stromness.

The exhibition displayed three-dimensional frames adorned with twisting sheets of parallel threads. Fabric-wrapped assemblages, partly embroidered, partly beaded, cast shifting shapes throughout the gallery space. The colour palette for the show was predominantly white, with touches of pastel hues. The overall look is of shifting iridescent colour.

‘I used white as the colour of silence, where our inner voice has the opportunity to show up. Within the quiet, neglected thoughts can appear.’

The landscape not only influences Barrington’s works, but it plays a part in creating it too. After Shaping the Void, Barrington wanted her work to have more of a physical connection to the land, so she started using seasonal plants and flora to dye her threads, taking the landscape into the studio.

The natural environment of Orkney also influenced the display format of the exhibition:

‘The idea for the works in frames with the landscape expanding out of them came from looking out of the windows to check the weather pattern from where I live’.

Invisible Traces

Barrington also speaks of rhythms and patterns within the landscape. The rhythm of the sea, the weather patterns, and the season’s changes are all leaving invisible traces. One’s path through the landscape leaves an invisible trace too.

‘For Shaping the Void, I thought about my patterns and the invisible trace that is recorded daily from my home to the studio, creating a loop.

My studio is in Stromness which is a different town to where I live. As I drive to my studio, I pass ancient monuments such as Maeshowe, The Standing Stones of Stenness and The Ring of Brodgar.

I think about the landscape and who was there before. There are things we know of this island, and then there is the unknown; memories suspended in time, contained within the landscape, waiting to be discovered. The open spaces vibrate with this energy’.

I asked Barrington about her experience studying in London, and if the dramatic change in the landscape altered her work at all.

‘I never put down roots and was always caught in a continuous loop heading North for visits. My identity as an islander never left me. One of my tutors at Saint Martin’s always said to me that being from Orkney is very exotic to Londoners. I know how special the landscape is here on Orkney and throughout my time in London, these memories and dreams were communicated through abstract marks, shapes and forms’.

In-Between Times

Time is also an important factor in Barrington’s work. The sculptures themselves speak of repetition and motion, with their looping structures and repeated parallel threads. Even the thread itself could be a metaphor for time. Then there is the act of embroidery; a labour and time intensive artform of recurrent looping motions.

But it is the effect that the passing of time has on the environment that has the biggest impact on Barrington’s work. The natural light casts shadows throughout the exhibition, which are as much a part of the works as the sculptures themselves. Her work seems to intuit seasonal changes, developing a narrative of colours, textures, and patterns based on the clock and the environment.

‘The exhibition invited viewers to contemplate their presence within the landscape, and take note of its changes, movements and rhythms. Walking around the exhibition and watching the pieces reacting to the light enabled the re-imagining of the landscape. The works evoke the feeling of those in-between times of dawn and twilight that are very poetic and sublime.’

‘At twilight, there is the reassurance that we are in flux; that the days are fleeting and transient like the shadows within the landscape. And at dawn, the possibilities of the day are boundless, to quote Rumi:

“The breezes at dawn have secrets to tell you. Don’t go back to sleep!”’.

Shaping the Void

The concept of ’emptiness’ within open spaces, is another idea that Barrington explores in relation to the landscape of Orkney.

‘The Japanese concept of Ma is taken from formal Japanese flower arrangement (Ikebana) where not only the flowers are considered beautiful, but the spaces between the flowers are too.

Looking at spaces between things; thoughts, objects, breaths, movements – there are fields that exist where we think there is nothing; paces between objects, space between movements. Space is always still and silent, but this silence vibrates with energy. Within the open space, there are possibilities.’

In her work ‘Space in Between’, the void becomes an equally positive space for the projection of ideas. there is an ‘energetic silence’ projected in the light and shadows that fill these spaces, where the invisible presence of the island’s heritage is present.

‘I used white as the predominant colour within this show, as it can be associated with silence, where our inner voice has the opportunity to show up. When there is quiet, neglected thoughts can appear. The unspeakable has a ghostly presence within the silence. where there is beauty there can be found terror.

Barrington continues to explore the fabric of the Orkney’s landscape in her studio art practice. She is also continuing this conversation into textiles, with a production of luxury scarves made from silk.

Barrington will soon be showing in the Society of Scottish Artists Annual Exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts of Edinburgh. She is also exhibiting in next year’s St Magnus Festival on Orkney working with materials from the landscape to make a living sculpture.