Gods of the Earth, Gods of the Sea

by ruth barker, 23 Mar 2009

Hello,

A plethora of parties this last weekend, with artist Michael Stumpf, gallerist Sorcha Dallas, and craftswoman Bérengère Chabanis among those sharing a birthday. Many happy returns to all (but I don’t think I’ll be eating any more cake for a while…)

So I promised to post some pictures of the Ian Hamilton Finlay piece I went to see in Orkney last year. And here they are

I went to Orkney last summer, to visit the Pier Art Centre in Stromness and meet with exhibitions officer Andrew Parkinson. We spoke about the recent redevelopment of The Pier by Reiach and Hall architects and how the building has helped the centre become embedded in the local community.

At the end of our meeting, Andrew gave me a black and white postcard showing Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Gods of the Earth, Gods of the Sea, an epic stone slab of a work, which he told me was sited on the nearby island of Rousay. As I had an extra day before my return to mainland Scotland, I decided to go and see the piece for myself. Andrew drew me a map and, fortified by provisions from the local shop, I set off early the next morning. I would take a bus from Stromness to Kirkwall, then another bus from Kirkwall to Tingwall, and finally the ferry from Tingwall to Rousay. From the harbour it should just be a short walk.

The weather as I set off was optimistically fresh and breezy, with a clean wash of late summer sun. As my ferry drew close to the Rousay harbour however, I saw the ominous low of a rain saturated cloudline approaching from the west. As I would have to walk the five miles or so to the work with no shelter this was a little concerning, but I still hoped I could outrun the downpour. I didn’t intend to be long in Rousay; just long enough to climb the hill, see the work, and return to the ferry. There is supposed to be a fantastic neolithic site on the far side of the island, but I wasn’t convinced that I could make it there and back on foot in time for the last ferry, and I didn’t want to be stranded.

Studying Andrew’s map, I began to plan my route as the ferry completed its crossing in absolute calm. Heading east along the road, I should find that the path would begin to climb. For about five miles I should follow the road round, past the church, the school and the old manse. If I kept going, Andrew had said that I should be fine, but that it was still very possible to miss Finlay’s work, lying as it does just off the road, to the right hand side. If I got to the very top of the hill, he had warned me, I had gone too far.

Once on dry land again I shouldered my light bag and set off, my eyes on the black cloud that seemed to crown the hill that I was starting to ascend. Five miles is a very short distance. Five miles up a steep hill is a bit longer. Five miles up a steep hill when you don’t quite know where you’re going is (mysteriously) quite a long way. The landscape was opaque somehow. I felt that it had it’s back to me, and I couldn’t find a way in to it. Livestock had a baleful look, and the cars that passed me did so at full speed, throwing up patterns of thin mud. At one point I passed a gated field in which stood the concrete ruins of a farmhouse, abrupt and stark as ancient dolmans against the hillside. The structure had a classical look, and, as I passed it, the first drops of rain fell, and an icy wind started.

The road became very steep very suddenly, climbing up to what seemed like the top of the island, and I had to hunch myself against the horizontal downpour. I was far too close to turn back so I struggled on, climbing up and up while the road beneath me became a sudden stream of cascading water. Almost at the brow of the hill, I had a moment of doubt – I could see nothing, and must have come too far. I had got no sense of the scale of the work from Andrew’s postcard, nor how far off the road the work was, and the small pale objects I kept staring at suspiciously always turned out to be distant sheep.

At the very crest, I saw it. Unmistakable, even in the (by now torrential) rain. A break in the low wall by the side of the road led to a cleared area at the very top of the cliffs. Rooted solidly in the earth, suspended against the pressure of the immense sky and the expanse of the Atlantic ocean, was a single pale slab with raised text and a net of dark lines. There was a weight to the work that was not solely due to its mass.

Approaching it from the road, tramping the heather and peat, Gods seems brooding and silent. And yet it is not a lonely work. Completed in 2005, not long before the artist’s death, there is a memorial quality to it that does not sit incongruously. Like all memorials perhaps, event those in lonely sites, the stone seems full – of words, of time, of thinking. Sitting on the brink of the land, it seems stable and complete.

Perhaps my response to Gods of the Earth would be less emotive if I had come across it in less elemental conditions, but perhaps not. Gods is a huge work, which demands to be looked upon as a monument. Unapologetic and uncompromising, it is unarguably a work that does not shirk the problematics of monumental sculpture. It is masculine and didactic, in a sense. It is certainly romantic, and will in time perhaps be thought dated and clichéd. It is true that Gods indelibly imposes itself onto this unique landscape and claims the heartstopping gulf of sky and sea as its own, stamping it’s identity on a place far older and greater and more complex than the work itself could ever be. And yet does it well, and with a certain power. I wont be able to forget it.

Click here for a Times Online article that mentions Gods.

To see more of Finlay’s work, you can visit his garden at Little Sparta: find out how here

To find out more about visiting Orkney, try here

More later,
R