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© 2007
Scottish Provincial Press
Published monthly by
New Century Publishing Group
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Erlend Barclay speaks to artist Andrew Ward about what drives his artistic passion, his return to Scotland after 30 years of living and working abroad and how his new work explores the environmental effects of fish farming
Art of Africa
July 2008
See this article as it appears in the magazine
 UP A short flight of stairs in an Ullapool side street there is a room where the windows peer out across the back of the west coast fishing village to the distant hills. The glass is covered in sheets of plastic stuck down with thick tape, an effect which lets the daylight in but makes looking out like trying to use someone else’s spectacles – blurred and undefined.
At the far end of the room, covering the wall from floor to ceiling, the huge multi-coloured face of a man looms from a canvas, his features defined by vibrant layers of oil paint. So eye-catching and vivid are the colours that the portrait seems alive, as though it contains a trace of the man’s very personality or spirit.
This is the studio of artist Andrew Ward. The space and the outlook are a far cry from the warehouse-sized studios he grew accustomed to during his three decades spent living and working in mainland Europe. Andrew was raised less than 50 miles east of Ullapool in the spa village of Strathpeffer. He left Scotland in the late 1970s after completing an art degree in Dundee and travelled across Africa before establishing an artistic base for himself in Switzerland.
The 30 years abroad saw Andrew develop a reputation as a prolific artist and a skilled and able teacher. His accomplishments during his time abroad include a film highlighting the fragility of one of Europe’s endangered forests which was celebrated at artistic festivals from Slovenia to France; being a guest lecturer at Zurich University where he explored art as a tool for communication and learning; and being invited to Taiwan, Korea and the Philippines to produce an art installation on the theme of sex slavery among women.
While at Dundee Art College Andrew developed an appetite for African art and chose the topic for his dissertation.
“I was excited by how Picasso had been influenced by African art in the 1950s and that moved me to study it,” he explained. “Through his work I began to see the power inherent in the carved figures and masks.”
But when he began to research books on the subject Andrew was left disappointed. The art was described at arms’ length and out of context, sterilised from the social and cultural fabric which fuelled its creation.
“I was seeing through the filter of Western anthropology – standing outside a culture and being shown what the author deemed to be worth showing.
Ritual
“But what is a mask without the dance, without the costume, drums or singing? What is it without the stamping in the dust, the fire, that special night before the hunt? A lot of the authors described the ritual but none had experienced it, none of them had actually got down in the dance.”
When he handed in his completed thesis, his tutor – author and film-maker Tim Neat – suggested that Andrew would have to travel to Africa to experience what he had written about first-hand.
Two years after completing his degree Andrew was travelling through Africa living with tribal people, immersing himself in their way of life and discovering those rituals first-hand. Having left Scotland with very little money he used his artistic skills to support himself.
“The journey was integral to opening up my creative life because I went with very little money and four or five sketch pads,” he said. “I basically drew myself through Africa. I even paid for my boat journey into Sudan with drawings of the captain and the crew. It was incredibly informative.”
It was during this time that his paintings began to take on a new and different quality.
“When I lived with tribal people, they didn’t have any photographic concept,” he explained. “If I drew a portrait they weren’t expecting a photograph, they weren’t expecting a likeness. They believed I was drawing their soul so it was a huge thing, this magical performance that was taking place. I basically unlearned everything I had been taught.”
That same magic he discovered in Africa is evident in the work he creates now – in the portrait hanging in his Ullapool studio and in the large-scale paintings of Gaelic bards he has installed on the Caledonian MacBrayne ferries linking the Western Isles with the Scottish mainland.
But Andrew’s work also contains other elements – a deep and tender humanity, a yearning to understand, to raise awareness of a particular issue and, where possible, to help people to communicate and come to terms with aspects of their lives.
In 1999 he was invited to Taiwan to meet The Comfort Women of Taiwan – women from the island, China, the Philippines and Holland who were used as sexual slaves by the Japanese Imperial Army during the Second World War. The trip was designed to explore the possibility of creating an art installation conveying the women’s story and their suffering.
“When I made this trip, what really took place was meeting these women and drawing their hands,” said Andrew. “The simple act – I drew by touching their hands. I drew these lines onto tracing paper just through the sense of touch.”
Ordeal
Since taking part in the project the women have spoken out in public about their ordeal, releasing the emotions and tensions locked within them for so long.
The installation is now on a long-term world tour and has been shown in places including the United Nations headquarters in South Africa, The Hague, Philadelphia Free Public Library and Georgetown University.
In 2005 Andrew decided to return to his roots and he now lives in Ullapool with his wife and two children. His links with Europe remain – he returns to Italy on a regular basis and his work is represented by a Swiss art gallery.
Since his return Andrew has been working on a variety of projects. The Bardic Voyage comprises 12 large-scale portraits of Gaelic bards, some of which are now installed on the Caledonian Macbrayne ferries.
“The idea behind the Bardic Voyage is to convey the inspiration and creative force of the Gaelic bards, connecting the present day with the pre-Christian Gaidhealtachd,” he explained.
“The bards are a living tradition rooted in our past, deep in our unconscious. They have always been and remain a voice for the people, describing who we are and where we come from.”
Andrew has also created artintervention.com – an umbrella title for his own work, and collaborations with others, which focuses on social, political or environmental issues.
Although a relatively new inception Andrew has already created a 10-minute animation under artintervention.com entitled Face of the Bard, collaborating with John McGeoch from Arts in Motion for the project. The animation features the voice of Lesley Strachan singing text written by poet Jon Miller with sound excerpts recorded in Smoo Caves by the composer Robert Dow.
Another art-intervention project is running at the Royal Highland Hotel in Inverness until September. Salmo Salar is a large-scale art installation featuring a collection of 100 paintings of wild Atlantic salmon. Each one is painted on a scale larger than life with the vibrant colours which are part of Andrew’s trademark giving each painting an energy which leaps out at the viewer.
Salmon
The installation will be followed by a 10-minute animated video designed to highlight the decreasing numbers of wild Atlantic salmon in Scotland’s rivers.
As Andrew explained, the work was initially designed to explore the link between salmon and Celtic mythology. However, the more research he conducted, the more his original aims changed.
“I started it purely out of an interest in and connection to the salmon. I wanted to explore what they stood for symbolically,” he said. “But the more research I did the more shocked I became about the predicament of wild salmon in Scotland. I helped out at the salmon fishing in the Moray Firth when I lived in Scotland years ago but things were so different back then. The salmon were more abundant.”
He continued: “You start of doing something – creating something – on a cultural theme. But you soon realise it functions on a political, environmental and spiritual level too.”
Andrew’s research has not only fuelled his concerns about the effects of salmon farming on wild salmon stocks but also the ability of Scotland to undersell itself.
“Coming back to Scotland I can see how easy it is to sell ourselves down the river. We have all this amazing natural beauty and a wealth of natural resources right here but people can be too tempted by quick financial gain – whether it is salmon farming or wind farms.
“In Celtic mythology the salmon was known as the fish of knowledge, it is a symbol of the great strength of spirit and this is connected to our own subconscious and to our culture. If we let the wild salmon diminish and disappear then we are somehow losing part of our own deep-rooted culture and spirit.
“What I am trying to do through my art is to create an awareness of this link between the wild salmon and the connections with humankind which was evident in Celtic mythology. I am trying to raise awareness to the fact that we are in danger of losing one of Scotland’s most important natural resources and in letting that happen we risk losing a part of ourselves.” |
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