For the past week eight of Shetland College's finest textile students have transformed a former office in a shed in a run down corner of Lerwick into a shining display of colour and texture. James Mackenzie went and had a peek before their collective work was dismantled and shipped to London for the wider world to appreciate.

Textile magic

25 June, 2007

I'M SURE that the words 'magic' and 'imagination' must have the same ancestry. Both have been in evidence at an unassuming wooden shed in Garthspool, Lerwick for the last ten days.

The old Shearer's Shipping Office is where folk went to pick up their Argos catalogue goods. Mass production and mail order. Convenience shopping, especially if you live remote from retail parks (note: the park is for the car and the shopping trolley, not for the benefit our health), makes sense, and there's nothing wrong with it, but it's at the other end of the design yardstick from what's been on offer lately at Shearers.

Amazing, first, what a coat of white paint can do. No, that's incorrect. Lend the redundant building (a big thanks to the owner, Lerwick Port Authority) to a group of talented and committed art and textile design students, and just see what they can do. THAT'S amazing.

Is it the standard and quality of teaching, or the individual seeds of creativity which result in this inspirational exhibition? It must be both, a kind of dialectic process enabled by Shetland College and the University of the Highlands and Islands.

But there is also now a refreshing fusion of imaginative art - which traditionally used to be manifested in the two dimensions of paint and the three dimensions of stone and metal - and craft, which, because it was apparently a matter of a tradesperson's handiwork rather than vision, was less exalted.

These BA degree students have stretched and woven fabrics, used light and space, paint, print, forms of nature, personal and cultural history, to create new worlds. Some you could gaze upon on your wall, some could be suspended in underwater light, others you could drape around your neck or pin to clothing - or even be clothed in.

Even a used teabag can tell a story - a bowl of them is a pot-pourri of reminiscence.

Feathers and the texture and pattern of (living) animal skins transfer to both natural and artificial fibres. A comforting soft teddy bear is contrasted with cooler and harsher textures and shapes, which can magnify little worries into anxieties. Irridescent sea-creatures swim in ultraviolet light. Cranes dance across a piece of fabric. Delicate lace scarves are like magnified cell structures.

A common theme among the seven exhibitors is sensitivity to the environment and our dependence on it, an awareness of a sustainable use of resources. So there is an organic feel throughout, of being rooted into a culture but being absolutely free to respond to new techniques and influences.

The eight exhibitors - Kath Carlyle, Karen Clubb, Vaila Cumming, Jo Jack, Nielanell Kalra, Kharis Leggate, Val Saether, and Carol Wishart - had prepared these portfolios for their degrees, which I hope they all pass with first class honours.

The exhibition is now moving to the Business Design Centre in London, as part of New Designers 2007, which is described as "the foremost event in graduate design and is full of truly fresh creative talent."

This group of women, these magicians, from these sea-girt isles are bound to make waves there.