A much needed initiative that will attract wide support, and reverse the decline in critical space for the visual arts in Scotland.
It is invigorating and valuable to have a magazine for these latitudes that will recognise, present and critique the arts produced here from an informed basis and help move the centre of gravity North.
What is needed now, more than ever, is a way of creating connections, building networks, and giving artists a platform to show the world the work being created in the Highlands & Islands. There is much power in the creation of one central source to do this, and Editor Ian McKay has the experience and the method to make that happen.
As our name implies, we are committed to the belief that the visual arts have a crucial role to play in our development as individuals and as a community. So we are very excited about Art North, coming as it does from somebody who has demonstrated such a keen insight and commitment to exploring the imaginative and creative life and development of this fascinating, inspiring, and often challenging part of the world.
It is great to think of a visual arts magazine being edited from the far north. Every point on the periphery is the centre of another circle, not in terms of geography but topographies of the mind.
An enterprising project with a focus on Scottish and Nordic art that maps well with my ongoing interest in Northern Romantic Art; an area that has been rather overlooked and would benefit from critical revision and support.
I absolutely support this kind of publication being made, and its redefining of the definition of the centre where art is thought to take place – instead looking outward to all the amazing work going on around ‘the edges’.
The arrival of a new contemporary visual art and craft magazine for Scotland and the Far North is something to celebrate!
It’s really cool what you’re doing. Globalisation may have established the Faroe Islands as a popular travel destination, but this is the first time the Faroe Islands are included in an international art magazine!
Great to see new cultural and artistic tendrils reaching beyond the expected. I hope to see the contemporary and the political given as much space as craft and tradition. We need to grow a new Scotland, and culture can be the start.
Lecturer, Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art & Design – Visual Artist working with Screen-based & Digital Technologies.