Fair Saturday 2025 – Portraits for Peace
For the 2025 Fair Saturday event at Northlight gallery in Stromness I will be contributing to a joint exhibition called Portraits For Peace. This event takes place in association with The Orkney News and has received funding from The Arts and Humanities Council via the University of Glasgow. Thanks to Law Professor Dr. Charlie Peevers, whose research relates to peace activism and who has made this possible.
Fair Saturday exists as a counterpoint to the consumerism of Black Friday, and is a celebration of art and culture with a non-commercial emphasis. It takes place on the Saturday immediately following Black Friday, which this year is the 29th of November. Portraits for Peace will be taking donations for Orkney Rape and Sexual Assault Service.
Dr. Peevers will be visiting Orkney during the exhibition run and giving a public talk on her work – details still to be confirmed at the time of writing.
Orkney has a history of activism which includes the Orkney Woman’s Suffrage Society, the anti-uranium mining protests of the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Free-Winged Eagle newspaper, and more recently the regular vigils held by Orkney Friends of Palestine in response to the ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
Portraits for Peace will show work kindly loaned to Northlight by the artists Susy Shearer, Carolyn Dixon, Robinson RR, Bryce Wilson, and the family of the late Ian MacInnes, who was an artist, teacher and an activist strongly involved with anti-uranium mining campaign in Orkney (among other things).
In addition to the work on show I will be using Northlight gallery as an open studio in which to paint the portraits of several local peace activists who have agreed to sit for me. Two of them also have personal family history fleeing persecution from authoritarian, murderous regimes. My hope is to create portraits of these people which capture something of their individual stories, and the way their experiences have shaped them and led to their own activism and strength of character.
We are living in very dark times and witnessing the most extreme atrocities (in which the British Government is actively complicit). I do not believe that art has the power to change these things directly, but it does have the power to hold up a mirror to society, and to make people think. Perhaps it can influence things indirectly.
This exhibition will be a positive event, taking place in a peaceful gallery space, and highlighting the importance of standing up for what it right.
As an artist I am also greatly looking forward to the opportunity to do some painting of people from life, which is something I don’t often get the chance to do these days.
Portraits for Peace opens at 11am on Saturday 29th of November 2025 and runs 11am-5pm daily except Sundays and Mondays until Tuesday 16th of December.
