Artists JJ Jamieson and Joyce Wark combined music, film and drawing in Feyness, a 2022 installation developed for the community-owned Hymhus in Bigton, Shetland.
The title comes from a Shetland word for ghost. The project drew on stories of people who had been treated as outcasts within the islands’ past and used those accounts to question attitudes continuing into the present.
Three songs interpreted through image
Jamieson and Wark had previously collaborated through musical projects including Bongshang and Shoormal. For Feyness, they produced three songs and extended them through film and drawing.
The different media allowed the artists to move between narrative, atmosphere and visual interpretation. The songs provided an emotional structure, while the films and drawings gave form to figures and histories that could otherwise remain indistinct.
The exhibition approached the ghost not simply as a supernatural subject but as a metaphor for people excluded from accepted social life. Looking back at those stories became a way of examining how communities decide who belongs and whose experiences are remembered.
A former church becoming a cultural space
Feyness was among the early projects presented after the Bigton Collective took ownership of the former Church of Scotland building. Renamed Hymhus, the venue was intended for exhibitions, installations, concerts, arts and crafts, ceremonies and other community events.
The setting added another layer to the work. A building carrying its own religious and communal history became the site for stories concerned with memory, absence and social judgement.
The exhibition demonstrated how a local cultural space could support work rooted in Shetland language and history without becoming narrowly nostalgic. By combining older stories with contemporary media, Feyness used the past to challenge the present.