Neville Gabie: toandFRO

Pier Arts Centre, Stromness, Orkney until November 5

www.pierartscentre.com

NEVILLE Gabie’s work is entirely democratic in its crossing of borders and boundaries to explore the very diverse communities with which he works. He has worked with bus drivers and builders as part of a residency at the Olympic Park during the construction period during London’s Olympic Games (creating a photographic reconstruction of Seurat’s The Bathers with construction workers at the Olympic rowing centre and a film, shown here, of one of the Park’s bus drivers swimming the length of her route in the Olympic Pool). He travelled to Antartica with the British Antartic Survey to fly kites, making video drawings of passing landscapes whose changing outlines he repeatedly drew upon with marker pen, as if trying to capture each fleeting view.

The Pier exhibition is a fascinating survey of Gabie’s works, ranging from his native South Africa to Achtilbuie. The latter was the subject of a film, “Afloat”, in which Gabie followed the community at Coigach as they spent 18 months constructing a St. Ayles skiff, and a season of racing as part of the coastal rowing community. On display too, a pressurized container which once held the collective exhalations of 1111 WOMAD festival goers, and the audio of its release at the Mace Head atmospheric research station at Connemara.