Showcasing various artists, all drawing from the wild and sweeping landscape of the Orkney Islands, the work exhibited at the Royal Scottish Academy’s “In Orcadia” succeed in bringing the untameable spirit of Orkney to Edinburgh. Indeed, the exhibition is a transformative space at the centre of the capital.
Predominantly featured is Samantha Clark’s new collection, all painted within the last year. Her meticulous mark-making conjures a sense of ephemerality, whilst also recalling organic matter and the raw shapes and organisms one might find in a petri dish. Intricate spiders’ webs are layered carefully to create a delicate mesh of cloudlike forms in “Wave Cloud Breath” (2024). Clark’s latest collection is created using largely acrylic paint, a medium that owes as much to the element of water as the artist’s subject matter clearly does. In “Voyager” (2024) with its blue-green dotted surface, Clark captures the movement of the Scottish sea as though it has a life of its own. She also works with aluminium and brass leaf, whose accents gleam out of the painting backgrounds in luminous silvers and bronzes.
In the adjacent gallery space, the Royal Scottish Academy holds its annual “Turner in January.” With a long and shuffling horde of museum-goers queuing up in a line looping back on itself several times, this year’s display shows an alternative collection of the artist’s timeless seascapes, bequeathed by the National Gallery of Ireland. Although a comparison between the two exhibitions does not need to be made, their proximity seems nothing but appropriate. In capturing a sense of the sublime and embodying the ruthless beauty of the natural world, Clark’s work recalls the seascapes of the long-revered Turner. Her reverence and passion for the Orkney Islands certainly shines through in this exhibition.
At the Royal Scottish Academy, until 2 March 2025.
“Approaching South Ronaldsay, Orkney Islands” by foxypar4 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.