Dancing with Long Grass: Rebecca Marr & Valerie Gillies / Magi Sinclair / Keith Colsell

We are part of nature - not separate from it - and the grasses, common and everyday - are a way to reconnect.

Highland-born Orkney photographer Rebecca Marr and Scottish poet Valerie Gillies have spent years among the grasses, gaining respect for them through their writing and art, each using their own languages of photography and poetry as an exchange. This work is about remembering something at the edge of our memory. Not so long ago, the grass names were widely known and there was value in the verges. The work in this exhibition is part of their wider conversation about the nature of grass, what it can teach us, and the act of noticing.  Here the focus is on using grasses. 

When the grass dances the publication by the artists, published by Luath Press, accompanies the exhibition. The website whenthegrassdances.art has further resources including recordings of the poems and an education pack in English and Gaelic.

 

Fellow Orkney maker Keith Colsell (Fesgar and Taete) has created a series of grass woven caisies for the exhibition. The Caisie is one of the forms of basketry traditional to Orkney, alongside the Cubbie and well known Strawbacked chair. Traditionally the straw chairs and baskets were bound with simmens (twine) made of hand-corded Marram grass or soft rush. Since the introduction of imported Coconut coir and sisal string the making of simmens has all but died out in Orkney, along with the making of caisies.

In an attempt to revive the Caisie Keith has been making them with both straw, rush and

grasses. The examples here are all of grass, rush, sedge and reed; they also feature the

simmens of grass and rush corded by the artist. They represent a return to a once

common but now almost forgotten practice. The two caisies with flower heads still attached are a departure from tradition and an experiment especially for this exhibition.