Guest Blog post from Tina Rose.
Over the past year fibre artist Anna S King and poet and writer Valerie Gillies have been collaborating to create an exhibition of new work in direct response to
Dawyck Botanic Garden in the Scottish Borders. Focusing together on the one locale excited and inspired them, each stimulated by the work of the other, pieces leading to words and words becoming elements of the pieces.
The exhibition title A Garden of Time and Silence reflects the Garden’s unique presence and its plenitude of time and silence. “It’s a very special place, it’s where you can escape to find time and silence, two commodities that are so precious nowadays you can’t put a monetary value on them” explains King. “I’ve been drawn to the garden for many years and visited a lot, watching it growing with old trees being sacrificed to the elements and new planting. Essentially it’s an arboretum, a place where trees are valued and cherished.”
She believes part of the specialness could be due to the topography with a steep hillside and a little glen running through it. The place where the garden lies has also had an interesting history with local finds revealing that an Iron Age fort, roman encampment and medieval village have all been located around the garden. They have both drawn on this ancient history and local mythology with the initial inspiration coming from the natural beauty of the landscape within and around the garden.
Over the year King regularly visited the garden, photographing, researching, collecting materials and observing the changing seasons. For part of the time Gillies was based in Harvard, USA and communication continued by correspondence with some of these exchanges of images, sketches and words also included in the exhibition.
The work in the exhibition comprises tapestry, mixed media montages and assemblages, framed works, baskets and books, the majority of works using materials collected from the gardens with writing and poems often in Scots.
A Garden of Time and Silence
Until 31 July 2016
Dawyck Studio, Dawyck Botanic Gardens, Near Stobo, Near Peebles, Scottish Borders EH45 9JU
