Eyes on the Prize
Touring mainland Orkney
Sept 2015
The Travelling Gallery is a mobile, contemporary art gallery custom-built in a big beautiful bus!
This year the Travelling Gallery commissioned artist Mike Inglis to create a new vinyl wrap for the bus and it looks great! To find out more about the ideas behind the wrap go to
http://www.eca.ed.ac.uk/school-of-design/mike-inglis
This year the Turner Prize is being hosted in Glasgow (Oct-Jan) so to coincide with this event the `bus` is exhibiting a selection of works by Scottish artists who in the past have been Turner Prize winners and nominees.
Douglas Gordon
Spiral, 2011
This film was viewed on 2 monitors, slowly played 8 sec apart so the eyes were out of sync when blinking/crying, it was quite strange to watch! Accompanying the film was an emotional ballad sung by Rufus Wainwright. I thought it was very powerful piece!
Jim Lambie
Metal Box (Blinded by the Light), 2015
This wall sculpture was inspired by weathered billboard concert posters which had curled at the corners revealing the previous posters beneath. Nice piece, great for selfies too!
Christine Borland & Brody Condon
Circles of Focus, Excerpt 1,2&3, 2015
This selection of pieces are from a larger circular sculpture with the clay being hand made here in Orkney. The clay was an experimental surface used to represent the human skin and a process called `hypostasis`. The concept was to re-imagine a contemporary approach to death&dying by proposing the body as a site of ambiguity, imagination&expression.
Callum Innes
Exposed Painting Orange, 2015
Innes is probably beat known for these `exposed` paintings. The un-painting process is made by removing the layers of paint with turpentine.
David Shrigley
Bone, 2008
Shrigley is probably best known for his distinctive drawing style but he also explores materials such as bronze and ceramic, to make `physical` some of his more unusual ideas.
Ian Hamilton Finlay
The Boat`s Inseparable Ripples, 1969
Brought up in Glasgow and Orkney, Finlay was one of the leaders of the concrete poetry movement and here is an early example of that works. His concepts relate to his interest in mans relationship to nature.
Lucy Skaer
15.04.13-21.04.13, 2013
7 lithographs printed from The Guardian newspapers plates. The title refers to the dates of the newspaper plates which were set in advance, without knowledge of the event`s that would make up that weeks news. The plates were partially deleted using chemicals, leaving only traces of these events and then printed by the artist. In Skaer`s work she investigates the way we understand and relate to objects and images.
Ciara Philips
Things I associate with you, 2014
Phillips works mainly with screenprinting using traditional techniques in a very experimental way. Initially I thought this piece was depicting the sun and moon/day and night but is in fact an obscure image of a modern lamp (mmmmm maybe this is what it represents then??)
Martin Boyce
Ventilation Grilles (Punching through the Clouds), 2004
This was a set of 4 acid etched brass plates with the phrase `Punching Through the Clouds` a visionary remark by the influential Modernist architect Lugwig Mies Van der Rohe(1886-1969) expressing the souring optimism of his groundbreaking skyscraper constructions. When Martin made these works it was following the events of 9/11, taking this into account the artworks evokes something more troubling concerning the modern city!
For more information on the Travelling Gallery and what they do visit
