Lessons of the Land, Launched 3 November 2025 

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My work was selected for this exhibition, Lessons of the Land. Artists and makers from across the Circumpolar North take part in this international online exhibition, presented as part of Relate North 2025, the annual symposium and exhibition organised by the ASAD (Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design) network of the University of the Arctic. The exhibition brings together visual artworks, craft, and digital expressions that reflect how the land shapes identity, learning, and belonging.Three images are exhibited which are stills from an in-progress film, Reverberations, my first foray into the world of soil. My interest in soil links directly to my desire to investigate what lies hidden beneath the surface of large scale industrial developments linked to the renewable energy industries. My interest has evolved slowly, beginning in Shetland in 2020 when armies of diggers began to excavate tonnes of soil and peat to construct the industrial scale Viking Energy Wind Farm.  I am deeply worried by what is hidden from our view through extractivist practices. What is buried, what happens behind the scenes, and underground? I worry about the injury that the land and its inhabitants incur through industrial scale developments for renewable energy being built across Shetland and all of rural Scotland to tackle the climate crisis. I wonder what we can learn from the soil that can help foster our reciprocal relationship with the natural world.

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Holm Sound. EPISODE NINE: SURVEY, 30 Oct 2025

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"We oversee, oversea and overland. A reckoning of time and a reckoning of place, broadcast live from Papay, Orkney with surveyor/contributors from near at hand and far-off lands. Holm Sound returned for a special one-off episode to survey the surveyors."  

The line-up of contributors for the event:

— Amy Liptrot, writer, seaweed collector and mum 

— Autumn Richardson, poet, editor and publisher 

— Frances Scott, artist and maker of maps

— Amanda Thomson, artist/writer

— Gayle Brogan, sonic alchemist

— Roxane Permar, artist

— Saoirse Higgins & Jonathan Ford, SurvØY artists

'Holm Sound' sought to become a beacon during the isolated years of the pandemic. A need continues for connections to be made anew, collaborations and networks that will stand artists in good stead for the coming years ahead. Initiated by Jonathan Ford, Saoirse Higgins and fellow organisers Louise Barrington, Frances Scott and Fiona Sanderson, the platform acts as an offshoot of ØY Festival, sharing the same ambition and generosity of spirit. "We have all become very much islands, the archipelago is what we aim for.”

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Landscapes in Pain, 25 Oct 2025​

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Landscapes in Pain was a tour and visit with artists Kristen Neville Taylor and Roxane Permar at Wheaton Arts and Cultural Center (Millville, NJ) for the Eco Social programme.  The event started with a tour of the solo exhibition by Kristen Neville Taylor “Come Into View” (on view from Sept 27 – Nov 1, 2025). After the tour Roxane Permar gave a presention about Landscape in Pain which is an ongoing project that forms the heart of a multi-layered visual and social response to construction of the industrial scale Viking Energy Wind Farm in Shetland, whose landscape has been in a constant state of injury since 2020. It is a collection of digital drawings and films which Permar has been making since March 2021 in response to the on-going construction of one of the largest onshore wind farms in Europe, Viking Energy Wind Farm, on Shetland’s Mainland, including the ongoing construction of related infrastructure and new wind farm developments. 

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TELEPHONE  Launched 10 October 2025

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I was really pleased to take part in TELEPHONE, an online exhibition presented in the form of a digital game played by artists. My film, Transmission, is included in the project. I consider it to be very much a part of Landscape in Pain as I was thinking about the Viking Energy Wind Farm. The project consists of 1,395 individual, interconnected and original works by artists from 930 cities in 65 countries. It works like the children’s game of the same name. A message is whispered from person to person and changes and evolves as it is passed from player to player. In this case, a secret message is passed from art form to art form, so a message could become poetry and then painting and then music and then film, throughout all possible forms of art. Each finished work of art is  passed to two or three other artists, so the game branches outward exponentially like a family tree.

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​Kindred: Living in the Landscape 2025  

 

​I took part in this international and interdisciplinary summer school  online in March and in person from 19 to 23 May in Nesna, Norway hosted by Nord University. I exhibited a series of five short films, Bloodlines, and gave a presentation about my art practice and research in relation to the idea of kinship. I am grateful to Shetland Arts and Creative Scotland for financial support through VACMA, the Visual Arts and Craftmakers Award.  The Living in the Landscape (LiLa) summer school is organised annually by the University of the Arctic’s thematic network,  Arctic Sustainable Art and Design (ASAD).The partners in this project  were University of Lapland, Nord University of Norway and Umeå University in Sweden, University of the West of Scotland and University of the Highlands and Islands. The aim of Lila has been to bring together research methods for landscape research from different disciplines including natural sciences, environmental humanities, anthropology, arts, media technology, digital pedagogy and education for sustainability. 

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SUCCESSFUL VACMA 2024/25 WINTER APPLICANTS ANNOUNCED  

 

I am grateful to receive one of six VACMA awards given by Shetland Arts Development Agency and Creative Scotland to participate in Kindred: Living in the Landscape 2025, an international exhibition and event in Norway; and to research a project between Shetland and Norway exploring the power of islands through cross-cultural and inter-generational dialogue. The new work for exhibition in Norway will be developed further to show in Shetland. 

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Islands Symposium 3,4 April 2025 

 

I was delighted to give one of the Keynote Presentations, 'Bloodlines: Kinship and Division in Island Power', for The Islands Symposium organised by Laura Denning (University of Portsmouth) and Dr Iain Robertson (UHI).  The Symposium grew out of an extended arts research project that Laura has been developing as part of a British Academy Small Research Grant – initially working under the umbrella of Wet Ontologies, a 2-year exploration of living with the weather as a lens through which to understand kinship.​

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Islands Matter Seminar

 

On 18 March 2025 I led a seminar - The Landscape in Pain: Art for Shifting Relations with the Land - for  Islands Matter, regular guest seminar sessions orgnised by the UHI Institute for Northern Studies.  The environmental, social, cultural, and economic changes occurring in rural Scotland and across geographically remote communities in the northern and Arctic region are charged with far reaching geopolitical consequences as well as human and environmental impact that require multiple voices in dialogue. I used my project Landscape in Pain to consider how art and social based practices can deal with issues that threaten society,  particularly issues around climate change which involve the industrialisation of natural resources and new forms of colonisation. ​​

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Living in the Landscape 2024

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In November I took part in the exhibition Flow: Currents of Change in our River Landscapes along with some of our amazing students from the MA Art in Social Practice. The exhibition was the culmination of  the fifth Living in the Landscape Art-based Research Methods Summer School which investigated rivers and the impact of green energy production on river landscapes.  I exhibited my new film Anunder, which I made as part of this project.

 

The international and interdisciplinary Living in the Landscape Summer School series was organised by the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) Thematic Network and  coordinated by the University of Lapland. The school is run in collaboration with the Nord University of Norway, Umeå University, University of the Highlands and Islands and University of the West of Scotland. The participating students from these institutions study Art, Education, Nature Sciences, Creative Media Practice, Fashion, Art and Social Practice, Mathematics at MA and PhD level. The 2024 school was launched in March and the Online seminar phase lasted until mid-May. The school continued by undertaking  fieldwork in Rovaniemi, Lapland, Finland in late May. The exhibition opening and the publication launch took place at the RELATE NORTH symposium in Rovaniemi, in November 2024. The Lapland Provincial Museum served as a cross-sectoral partner. The development of the summer school was supported by the Nordplus Horizontal program and funding from the Norwegian UArctic.​

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Homemade, Mareel Cinema, 6 September 2024

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​My short film Windlins (2023) was selected for screening in Homemade, a popular component of Shetland's former annual film festival Screenplay.

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Arctic Congress 

 

In May 2024 I was privileged to attend the Arctic Congress in Bodø, Norway, a wonderful town in the Arctic Circle. One of my films from Landscape in Pain #164615072023 was included in the exhibition New Genre Arctic Art.  I also organised a panel called 'Art and social practice in support of young people dealing with societal threats' that featured four colleagues from the Arctic Sustainable Art and Design (ASAD) Network of the University of the Arctic.  We gave three presentations: 1) 'Dealing with Environmental Challenges in the Arctic - The Marine Debris Project' by Mette Gårdvik, Associate Professor in Art Education; Wenche Sørmo, Dr.Scient. Associate Professor in Natural Science; Karin Stoll, Associate Professor in Natural Science Education; all three presenters are researchers at Nord Universitet, Nesna Campus. 2) 'Communities in Artistic Dialogue - Sharing the visualisations of the Arctic’ by DA Annamari Manninen, Lecturer in Art Education, University of Lapland and 3) 'The Landscape in Pain: Art for shifting relations with the land - Roxane Permar, Professor in Art and Social Practice, Centre for Island Creativity, UHI Shetland, University of the Highlands and Islands.

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Relate North 2023: Beyond Borders

 

I gave a presentation titled 'Climate crisis, extractivism and social art practice in Shetland', at the 11th annual Relate North research symposium and exhibition organised by the University of the Arctic’s thematic network, Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD 14-17 November.  This year it was organised in collaboration with the Department of Creative Studies, Umeå University, and the University of Lapland. I showed some of my recent work from Landscape in Pain (2023) in which I continue to try to make visible the extractivist principles and practices which threaten to destabilise communities such as Shetland through industrialisation and exploitation of natural resources in the drive to tackle the climate crisis. Information about the Symposium and Exhibition is here.

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SCPR Network: The Cultural Sector and the Climate Emergency

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I was delighted to speak at this event on 26 October 2023 at the University of Aberdeen organised by Professor Eleanor Belfiore. It was the third event in a programme aimed to develop a Scottish Cultural Policy Research Network which brings together cultural policy research experts working in Scotland, including policymakers, consultants, artists, businesses, and other actors in the Scottish creative economy, to facilitate knowledge exchange, collaboration and policy and industry impact. Some of the key sector issues include: the creative sector and post-covid recovery in Scotland (including the challenges and opportunities for young artists entering the job market); the role of arts and culture in addressing climate change and the commitment to net-zero; Scotland’s international image and role post-Brexit, and cultural relations.

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Image credt: Rowan Bazley, Floorpainting V (The Glasgow School of Art, Fine Art, 2022).

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Pollution from Wind Turbines

 

I organised this talk at UHI Shetland, Scalloway Campus, on 23 November 2022. Over 50 people attended, a good turnout in light of little publicity. The audience was both in person in the lecture theatre and online. The online audience included people from Canada, Ireland, Greece, the Netherlands, mainland Scotland and the Scottish isles, Norway, Iceland, Finland and Sweden.  We recorded the talk and you can access it here. 

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Landscape in Pain was selected by the organisation Earth Hackers for their new zine. 

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Community, culture, and belonging are key pieces of humanity often set upon the back burner of technological development – normalizing technologies destructive to people and the planet. This digital zine investigates these themes through the lenses of environmental justice and technology. Ten multi-media creative works and three honourable mentions that explore these ideas are here

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Image from the Environmental Justice in Tech Educator Toolkit

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Landscape in Pain: Shetland’s industrial scale wind farm and solastalgia

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I wrote this article about Landscape in Pain for the academic journal, Technical Aesthetics and Design Research.  It is a is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal whose goal is to form an interdisciplinary platform for research in the fields of design and architecture.  I finished corrections for the final proof not long before the invasion of Ukraine.  I was very excited to have an article published in a Russian publication and was particularly pleased with the northern and Arctic context for my body of work where I see links between the exploitation of natural resources in the Arctic, largely mining and potentially oil, and Shetland, where it is wind. Of course I was devastated, like so many, including Russian colleagues and friends, to see events unfold in Ukraine around the time everything was finished.  I was hesitant to include the news here. I am still not certain I should share the information, but at the time of writing (August 2022) I feel inclined to do so.  I will figure out a different way to make the article accessible in future.  The article is based on my talk in November 2021 at the International symposium, Relate North 2021: Everyday Extremes organised by Tomsk State University with the University of Lapland and the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design (ASAD) thematic network of the University of the Arctic.

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Image: Landscape in Pain #037420210606​

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9th Annual Symposium & Exhibition, the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design Network, 11 and 12 November

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I'm delighted that my work has been selected for this annual event, both for the exhibition and the symposium. I am speaking on 11 November. The talks are being streamed live on You Tube and you can watch the recordings here for Day 1 and Day 2. The event is a collaboration between the University of the Arctic’s Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design thematic network (ASAD), National Research Tomsk State University, and University of Lapland. This will be the ninth symposium in the series hosted by ASAD. The ASAD network aims to identify and share innovative practices in learning, teaching, research and knowledge exchange in the fields of art, design and visual culture education. The network promotes cooperation and collaboration between academic institutions and communities with the purpose of working towards a shared understanding of critical issues relevant to people living in the north.

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Häufig müssen wir zwischen zwei Übeln entscheiden: Wie wires auch anstellen.

 

This article is written by Hanspeter Spörri in response to my work that was in the exhibition in Switzerland «Verborgene Blumen blühen am schönsten» (Hidden Flowers Bloom Beautifully).  I'm delighted that the installation of my work, and Dorothea Rust's film, motivated him to question, to write and to publish in the September 2021 edition of the monthly magazine, APPENZELLER MAGAZIN, local to the area where the exhibition was held.

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Hidden Flowers Bloom Most Beautifully

 

is a collaborative exhibition between the artists collective Streunender Hund based in Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Switzerland, and artists from the Shetland Islands, in the United Kingdom. The exhibition is concurrently in Shetland and Appenzell Ausserrhoden during August 2021. Half of the works in each place  consist of local art, the other half of art from afar. In preparation for the exhibition, artists from Shetland and Switzerland have engaged in dialogue in pairs.  Details of these dialogues are integrated into the exhibitions and presented as research material. I have been in conversation with the artist Dorothea Rust. The exhibition opened in Shetland on 31 July at Mareel.  More information here.

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Landscape of Mutability

 

I'm pleased to be part of the online exhibition organised by researchers in the Arts Lab, University of Glasgow, who are exploring cultural representations of landscape and the effects of transformation, dislocation and mutability. In order to expand their research network within Scotland and to maintain a sense of community, they sent blank postcards to colleagues in academia, in organisations and among artists around Scotland, in addition to those outwith Scotland engaging with Scottish landscape. We were all asked to use each postcard as a canvas on which to express – in images, words, or other forms – the changing nature of the landscape in their lived perception. This online exhibition brings togetherpostcards in a map with a timeline. Together they provide a glimpse of landscape experiences across Scotland (and beyond) and highlight a variety of interactions with landscapes under circumstances of limited mobility.

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