VACMA: Orkneys Connections to Trans- Atlantic Slavery - Carolyn Dixon

The project is still ongoing, with a final exhibition date of May 2026. After exploring the possibilities offered by public spaces for exhibitions within Orkney (Libraries, Pier arts etc)  contact with OIC Arts Officer led me to a dialogue with the OIC Museums services team. Museum Services were looking towards a re-assessment of Colonialism and Orkney. They were interested in using an exhibition of my work within their re-assesment work but of necessity had a longer timetable than I had anticipated. We agreed that the work would form the basis for the summer exhibition of 2026. I feel this is an excellent outcome. I have always seen this work as contributing to a narrative of ‘the long 18C’ that to date has been largely overlooked within Orkney. For the exhibition to be located within the Museum is absolutely appropriate, and for it to connect with a re-assesment of Orkneys Colonial involvement both gives greater context and enriches the communicative power of both the exhibition and the Museum project.

Significantly, as the work has progressed, I have been determined to try to avoid a formulaic response to the enslavers and the Orkney landscapes they and their family inhabited in (usually) their youth.  I have trying to extend the technical limits of what I can achieve on my own with my limited press, financial and access provision, e.g. through multiple plate images, complex chine collection production and integration, scale of prints, inks used and well as compositional and aesthetic factors. Importantly, the subject matter of the work has become clearer to me, addressing the need to make visible  the traces of 18C black lives connected to Orkney outwith and within Orkney that remain within the (global) archive.