Gill Tyson: The Absence of Alternatives

'We live at the end of the road, on a peninsula, many slow miles from the nearest shop, so the first thing that comes to mind about the absence of alternatives is making do, particularly in the areas of DIY and cookery. But what I’m addressing here is something else we may have all experienced recently; paying attention to a small segment of the world we inhabit and the incremental changes with the passage of time. For me for the past few years it has been the area around my home and studio on Morvern; the sea, the tides, the shoreline, the beach, the rocks, the birds. The small acts of noticing each iteration of the fragment of the world we inhabit informs our understanding of changes of a larger scale. No more so when you live only a few yards from the sea.

I have learnt that taking the kayak out on perfectly still water you can still feel the jitteriness of the sea after a storm. I have leant that the northern lights can be no more than an ethereal hint of green. I have learnt that oily iridescent shags on the black rock come and go, but we don’t know where (and they have evil green eyes). I have learnt that if you split a piece of basalt from the shore, inside might be a charred soot-like substance which will come off on your finger and smell of hot, burnt rock, from 55 million years ago.

The main body of this exhibition are works of stone lithography. This medium slows down the processing of an image. Study the stone as it is ground smooth with sandy grit ready to receive the oily drawing upon it; watch the slow evaporation of the watery tusche washes as they dry to the reticulations of characteristic lithographic mark making; consider each layer of colour as it is rolled up in oily ink on the wet stone. Stone, grit, oil, water and air are the very materials of the transaction, rendering this special place more legible to me and through it the world beyond.

During the last year I have had the great joy of working with a group of artists from Scotland and Pakistan. It was very special to me to find other artists with similar starting points, though very different work, including an artist with a decade long, and on-going, research into the changing ecologies of a small stretch of beach in Karachi. The last year has taught us as much about connection as isolation, and about the possibilities of alternatives as well as their absence.

The Absence Of Alternatives is a quote from a book by Peter Davidson called The Idea Of North, which itself was inspired by a sculpture by Dalziel and Scullion, inspired in turn by Glenn Gould’s documentary of the same name.'

Gill Tyson, May 2021

Gill Tyson specialises in lithography, a printmaking process that combines direct and expressive mark making with deliberate and aforethought building of layers. In cool, atmospheric colours the artist explores remote landscapes. Her ever-present brushstrokes indicate a distilled image; an abstracted world that only hints at a human presence.

Tyson trained at Edinburgh University and Edinburgh College of Art, where she graduated with an MA in Fine Art. In 2012 she was one of the artists representing Britain in The International Print Exhibition in Kyoto, Japan and in 2014 was Printmaker Of The Year at Printfest. She was prizewinner at the Society Of Scottish Artists on 2018. She is a former Chairman of Edinburgh Printmakers. Her work is in several public collections. Gill lives in Edinburgh and on Morvern, a peninsula on the West Coast of Scotland.