The Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife, is a delightful labyrinth of a place, located in a range of harbourfront buildings. Spending a long ‘Meet the Artist’ Weekend after the opening of my exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling the most common comment from visitors arriving at the Whaling Gallery where the exhibition was, was ‘It’s much bigger than I expected!’ It took me a good few days to work out the short cut back to the entrance (and the loos) and several times I got a bit lost.

Meet the Artist weekend at the Scottish Fisheries Museum

I first visited in March 2013, a cold slushy drive from Edinburgh. In what felt a bit like a corridor there was a selection of whaling objects and related items. The objects were mostly about Southern Atlantic whaling, but there were some old photos and a couple of 19^th century Arctic whaler logbooks. I also thought I spotted a couple of whale jawbones in the boat shed but wasn’t sure.

Fast forward to 2021. Scrolling through my twitter feed one evening in April I spot something about a whaling project at the Fisheries Museum. I have a look on the web site; they have discovered that one of the buildings that form part of the museum was the location of a whaler agent in the second half of the 18^th century. I get in touch with them about it, describing my interests and what I do. They are interested in talking to me about my work and a possible project on their whaling collection. And so, in May 2021, I find myself on another road trip to Fife. This time it feels ridiculously exotic. I’d only left Norfolk, the county I live in, a few of times over the previous year and here I am visiting whole other country!

Baffin Bay

I was particularly interested in the two 19^th century log books they hold. One was from 1830, the infamous ‘Baffin Fair’ Season. In 1830 bad weather sank 19 whale ships and damaged many more in the Baffin Bay whaling grounds. Few lives were lost, but with around 1000 men camping on the ice with the alcohol supplies rescued from the ships a party atmosphere soon ensued which came to be known as The Baffin Fair.

The log books, along with the new whaling display now located in the old whaling building gave me an opportunity to make some work contrasting the two whaling grounds; the earlier Greenland Fisheries, near Spitsbergen, and the Davis Strait/Baffin Bay Whaling grounds. Over the course of a very hot summer of 2022 two hanging textile pieces slowly developed, full of layered content, some obvious and some only of meaning to me. A chance purchase of a remnant bag containing some grey checked gingham made me think of graphs and I also made two hand embroidered graphs (I was also aware that our grant application to Scotland’s Year of Stories had included the phrase ‘exquisite embroideries’ and I wanted to make sure that there was some decent sewing in the exhibition!).

Overhaul

For various reasons these four pieces were only finished a week or so before the exhibition opened. The weekend before I had to travel up to Scotland to install and attend the opening I was searching for something in my work room and I came across a pile of assorted fabric that I had screen printed with a hand drawn version of a well-known illustration of the Whitby whaler William Scoresby Jnr’s whaleship Esk being hauled over onto the ice by the crew and other sailors to repair the hull. I had meant to do something with this image of ship repair and men camped on the ice to help tell the story of the 1830 season (though the Scoresby image was from an earlier ship repair). The black print on a Wedgewood blue fabric caught my eye and I wondered if I had time to make something of it. And I did, just. White and black fabric paint brought out the snow and shadows, some black freehand machine embroidery strengthened some of the printed lines and it was finished.

I had a bit of a last-minute panic about how big the space I had to fill and how much work I had for the exhibition. As I was pulling out an existing framed textile work for delivery for another exhibition on my way back from Fife I picked three works that had been made for The Arctic Whaling Year exhibition in Dundee in 2018-19. Victualling (featuring the Dundee Docks), Calling At Shetland and Sealing. I am very glad I did. We found a great place to hang them (and thanks to the volunteers at the museum who did an excellent job of hanging the work in a very challenging building). They added to the stories we were telling, based very much in Scotland and the museums and archives that hold the documents and objects linked to this period of Scotland’s history.