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The Launching of the Pier Arts Centre Margaret Gardiner
Abridged version of an essay written in 1988 by Margaret Gardiner (1904 - 2005) for the occasion of the ten year anniversary of the opening of the Pier Arts Centre, Orkney. Margaret Gardiner was a supporter of many artists associated with St Ives and was a particular friend of Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson, having known them in Hampstead. The author of several books including a biography of Barbara Hepworth, she left her collection of their work to the island of Orkney where it is now on permanent display.
We arrived in Kirkwall to one of the most spectacular sunsets that I have ever seen, the whole sky ablaze, a fiery red. 'I'll be taking you back the night' said Tom Sinclair, who was ferrying us over. 'There's nowhere there for you to stay.' But we were determined to confound him and as we trudged along the eastern coast road we stopped at each of the rare houses to ask could they put us up for the night. We were offered tea and bannocks and fresh baked cakes and friendly talk but no beds until we were near capitulating and returning to Tom when the folk at Langskaill - the Dickeys - took pity on us. One day, walking up the Leean and past the quarry, Martin pointed to a cottage, standing alone, no road to it, on a flat, green field below the brae. 'That looks empty' Martin said. 'If it is, let's buy it.' Crazy, I thought, a crazy idea. How could we ever come this far again? But Orkney already had both of us in thrall - and the cottage proved to have been empty for seven years and we bought it.
Barbara and Ben were having a real struggle to keep going – particularly after their triplet children were born - and they had to augment the rare sales of their essential work by designing textiles and rugs, printing strips of cloth with lino cuts and by any other ploys they could devise. So it was that whenever things began to look desperate for them and if I could do so, I would buy a carving or a painting. That was how, piecemeal and without deliberation, my collection came into being.
Now I must make another time jump and move on till well after the day when Martin and I first landed on Orkney. Martin was again the trigger. 'What are you going to do with all this stuff?' he asked. 'I don't think that I shall ever want to live in a house full of valuable works of art.' 'Oh well,' I said, without pausing to consider, 'I'll give it to Orkney'. It seemed to me then quite simple- merely a matter of a new clause in my will. But it didn't turn out like that, for when I spoke to my Orkney friends about the possibility they took it up with enthusiasm, wanted it to be extended from just a gallery to an arts centre and to be set up straight away. At about the same time my friend, that excellent artist Sylvia Wishart, who owned the warehouse on a little pier in Stromness, told me that she wanted to leave it and move further outside the town. The other half of the pier and the adjoining house in Victoria Street was a youth hostel and it seemed to me that if only it were possible to buy both warehouse and hostel they, and the pier itself, would make a most exciting arts centre.
The next three years have become in my mind a confusion of elation and despair, of unexpected successes and discouraging failures. I pestered everybody, I wrote to more than a hundred trusts, businesses and individuals for financial help, I persuaded the television programme 'Afternoon Plus' to do a piece about the project, I created a trust and appointed trustees. And from time to time there was a major breakthrough. One of these was when a friend brought Sandy Dunbar, the Director of the Scottish Arts Council I to see me. Sandy looked at the paintings and sculptures and talked with me about the plans for the Centre. Then, smiling, he said 'We'll help you as much as we possibly can.' Which is, indeed, what the SAC have done ever since. Again, when I approached Occidental Oil, some of their directors came to see me and there and then agreed that they wished to make us a grant. This has been, and is, one of our mainstays. Among their number was Alastair Dunnett, who became a trustee and whose friendship, generosity and good advice has been a constant encouragement. I think, too, that it was his advocacy that led to the tremendous boost given to the project when Dr Armand Hammer presented us with fifty thousand pounds towards the buying of the buildings.
But now there were new problems - the repair and conversion of the buildings, the appointment of a curator, decisions about management and the practical running of the place. Chance took a hand again when Patrick Heron, a painter friend from St Ives, said 'You ought to discuss the conversion with my architect daughter, Katherine. Conversions interest her.' So I talked to Kate, whom I hadn't seen since she was a child, and she told me firmly 'I'm going to do this job.'
The 14th of July, 1979 was a brilliant, sparkling day and the pier was abuzz with visitors. As the boat carrying Lord Balfour of Burleigh, the Chairman of the Scottish Arts Council, his wife and my son Martin, with John Stout, upright and resplendent in his Lighthouse Board uniform, rounded the pierhead, the thirteen fiddlers by the steps started to play. A green ribbon had been fastened across the gallery door, and as he approached it Lord Balfour was handed some shears. 'Now cut the painter' I commanded in my best nautical manner. 'Very appropriate for an art gallery' remarked Lord Balfour with a twinkle as he snipped the ribbon. And the Pier Arts Centre was launched'. |
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