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A Collection of Kinship

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A Collection of Kinship A Collection of Kinship Ethnographic drawing in Shetland Bérénice Carrington A Collection Of Kinship A gentle suite of subjective works mainly in watercolour and pencil, the results of a winter’s residency at the Owld Haa* on the island of Yell, Shetland. The pieces were conceived between September 2015 and March 2016. Most were produced in situ at the museum, but some came also from memory and photographs. They were exhibited at the Owld Haa Gallery during September and October 2016. Cover: Left - Detail: Ripper, flensing knife and Magellan Daisy Right - Detail: Gibbie Hoseason’s Penguins, photographer: B Carrington Portrait of carved penguin, 2015, 76 x 56 cm Within its collection, either under the provenance of these objects containing the bobbed hair of a glass, in cabinets or propped by contrasting them against young woman from circa 1920. up in the corner of a room the kindred articles from my personal Owld Haa displays whales’ teeth, background: a carved penguin a hair watch chain and a flensing from whaling days, a 1913 bayonet Whale’s teeth, Sooth* Georgia: blade. The drawings explore and sheath and a paper bag Leith, 2016, 46 x 51 cm Although they appear to be simple seemingly self-evident; beneath its basis in the prosaic, a Forget- compositions, the drawings are their commonplace purpose and me-not (Myosotis) drawn on the necessarily highly detailed and meaning there may lie another same plane as a hair watch chain arranged to set up a pictorial perspective. The inclusion of presents a pair of objects symbolic notion of the provenance of local flowers and mosses in some of enduring affection or love. the subjects. This open-ended of the pieces is more than an approach is predicated on the exercise in association. While idea that there is more to the a depiction of a Magellan daisy Bag of hair and Campion, relations between things than the alongside a flensing knife has 2016, 46 x 51 cm The hair watch chain is described his nephew who loaned it to the at the Owld Haa I was reminded by the Owld Haa as circa 1910 and museum. This story persuaded that museum exhibits can have made for Johnnie Hughson from me to look again at an anomalous a capacity to influence us in our Da* Kitchen in Cuppaster. The brown paper bag of copper hair personal lives and I allowed that hair was from Elizabeth Bruce, recovered from my late aunt’s process to capture my attention. Sunnylea Hamnavoe. Both houses estate. The hair turned out to are still lived in on Yell. The couple belong to my grandmother, Anne were never married. Johnnie died Bromelow, who had a bob cut in Hair watch chain and Myosotis, aged 25 and the chain passed to the 1920s. Throughout my time 2016, 46 x 51 cm The Owld Haa collection appears accompanied, unavoidably, by Bayonet and peat forming to be entirely constituted from less personal references. There is mosses, items donated by people who a compelling intimacy about the 2016, 46 x 51 cm have an association with Yell, Owld Haa’s approach. distinguishing it from larger regional and national museums where exhibits are often Bayonet over Ness a Soond*, When the provenance of an of Leith harbour, South Georgia. 2016, 46 x 51 cm artefact can be ascertained, we are Those teeth suggest the raw led inevitably to another story. material that Gibbie Hoseason of The sperm whale’s teeth donated Aywick worked with to carve the by Ronnie Manson of Basta are penguin that appears in Portrait of rendered in watercolour in the carved penguin. Both of these men foreground of a charcoal drawing from Yell were ‘at the whaling’. Flensing knives (like the one knives which were adapted to be I had heard a story about a bayonet donated to the Owld Haa by Peter used as ‘rippers’ for opening up from 1913 that was, similarly to the Walker from North-A-Voe) were peat banks. Yell is an island of peat flensing knives, adapted to be used used to strip the blubber and and its harvesting as a fuel, over with peats. Peat banks can be easily flesh from a whale. By the time hundreds of years, has shaped the seen beside the road and on the whaling was banned in the 1960s, social and topographic nature of hill ground throughout Yell. men from Shetland had returned the place. from South Georgia with flensing At the Ness a Soond in West Yell tool used to cut a slit the length visual resemblance to the archive are the long and elegant banks that of a peat bank as the first stage photographs of whalers opening were flawed by Johnnie Tulloch’s in removing the top turf (fael*), up whale carcasses. bayonet ripper. The ripper is a a process that bears a striking Left - Detail: John R Tulloch’s peat bank, Ness a Soond, 2016, 21 x 29 cm, lino print Centre - Peat bank, Ness a Soond, 2016, photographer: B Carrington Right - Detail, Whaler flensing, circa 1957, photographer: unknown The Magellans that grow on Yell Ripper, flensing knife and Magellan Daisy, are plants brought to the isles by 2016, 46 x 51 cm men returning from whaling in the ‘Southern Ocean’, according to the story. As the artworks evolved, the the painting of Anne Bromelow’s hemisphere from a different time. natural history of Yell became hair my mother remarked on But only through my experience an increasingly important how the beautiful red campions with the Owld Haa have I been influence and flowers and mosses of Yell were as prolific as those in able to bring this concept to assumed essential places in the Lancashire where she and Anne fruition. compositions. The studies of the came from. An idea of kinship in ripper and bayonet acknowledge objects originated, for me, with the importance of the tiny mosses the drawing Turtles all the way Turtles all the way down, that are the building blocks of peat down. This is art representative 2010, 68 x 96 cm, and the Yell hill landscape. During of a different culture in another photographer, Michal Kluvanek ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thanks to the members of the Old Haa Trust for accepting my proposal for a residency in the Museum, and to the individual Trust members who incorporated my visits into their work schedules. I am grateful to Hamish and Ruby Polson for the loan of their 1913 bayonet. The quotation from the Museum’s provenance for the hair watch chain is made with the permission of the Old Haa Trust. The detail of the whaler flensing is taken from a photograph held in the Museum’s collection, photographer unknown. Graphic production of Collection of Kinship by Baden Smith, Adelaide, South Australia.. www.berenicecarrington.com *Denotes Shetland dialect. Right above - Detail: Hair watch chain and Myosotis Right below: Detail: Gibbie Hoseason’s Penguins.
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