During the first lockdowns we published Magical Octopus, a tentacular book which has been awarded Best Dutch Book Design 2020. The project was initiated by artist & riso print expert Jo Frenken and grew out of a collection of poems, photo’s, maps and scientific drawings that Miek composed.

The pages of the book were designed and riso printed all over the world by Bananafish (Shanghai, CH), Calipso Press (Cali, CO), Corners Studio (Seoul, KR), Endless Editions (New York, USA), Gato Negro Ediciones (Mexico City, MX), Hand Saw Press (Tokyo, JP), Hato Press (London, UK), Issue Press (Grand Rapids, USA), kabinet.studio (Antwerp, BE), Knust (Nijmegen, NL), Quintal Éditions (Paris, FR), Raum Press (Salamanca, SE), Risolve (Lancaster, USA), Sigrid Calon (Tilburg, NL), Wobby.club (Tilburg, NL) and the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, NL).

For the Magical Octopus Sequel exhibition KNOCKvologan searched for a match between each chapter of the book and an artist, poet or composer with a strong connection to the Scottish west coast. Filip Andel, Andy Crabb, Derek Crook, Seth Crook, Elaine Dempsey, Rufus Isabel Elliot, David Faithfull, Fiona Glen, Katie Harris-MacLeod, Monica Haddock, Mhairi Killin, Naoko Mabon, Sue Murdoch, Julia Parks, Giles Perring, Christina Riley, Brodie Sim, Jan Sutch Pickard and Brian Thomas all took up the challenge to ‘translate' eight original pages into a new work.

We presented the Magical Octopus Sequel from 21st-28th November in the KNOCKvologan Barn. Filip Andel, Seth Crook and Naoko Mabon performed at the opening.

Filip Andel ～ Wobby.club

Filip Andel lives and works in Hamnavoe, Burra Island, Shetland. For this exhibition he travelled to Knockvologan disguised as William Work. There he presented The Arcus - Kraa Family album. A fictive story inspired by one specific print from Wobby.club; the two dancing monster creatures with long tales (see below). The performance comprised a series of martial arts exercises which he taught his audience during the opening.

Filip Andel is a Czechoslovakian artist. Since childhood he has been attracted by themes of remoteness, solitude and outsiderness and he documents on these themes through film photography, cine film and other media which enable him to tell a story.

The Arcus - Kraa Family

mixed media

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original prints by Wobby.club from Tilburg, The Netherlands

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Andy Crabb & Elaine Dempsey ～ Hand Saw Press

The work Haiku emerged during a number of phone conversations between Andy Crab and Elaine Dempsey and a subsequent shared trip to Fingal’s Cave on Staffa. Given the starting point of a work created in Japan, Elaine wrote four Haikus and composed a song for solo voice. Inspired by the clarity of the recording, Andy zoomed in on the depths of the octopus eye.

‘In the pages we were given as source inspiration there was an image of a Japanese school-child learning. This brought to mind the octopus as teacher and so it evolved that our haikus were written in the voice of the octopus, a creature we have long suspected has both intelligence and wisdom beyond our understanding. Many of the collaged images also showed means of catching octopuses as food. The tone and melody of the song was born from this sad recollection.’

Andy Crabb, based in Oban, has produced music videos, narrative, non narrative, documentary and community/issue based films. He currently works as the Filmmaker in residence for the Scottish Association for Marine Science (SAMS) where he has established a filmmaking culture amongst staff and students. Andy recently co-established the community empowering Aye Glas.

Elaine Dempsey from Glasgow has specialised in independent interactive arts and theatre. She frequently works collaboratively with musicians and artists both as a visual artist and as a vocalist.

Haiku

1min 25sec video

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original prints by Hand Saw Press from Tokyo, Japan

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Derek Crook ～ Jo Frenken

Derek Crook is a poet, former English teacher and book antiquarian from Fionnphort, Mull. For the exhibition Derek responded to Jo Frenken’s repetitive mussels prints with a poem called Mussel Shells.

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original prints by Jo Frenken from Jan van Eyck (Maastricht), The Netherlands

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Seth Crook ～ Issue Press

Seth Crook, son of Derek, taught philosophy at various universities in the US for a number of years, largely in the philosophy of mind and the theory of knowledge. Then he moved to the Isle of Mull and became devoted to poetry. As he says, he once loved the processes of reasoning that undermined ways of thinking, but now finds he also loves the processes of imagination that create them. In recent years Seth became an ardent swimmer and most of his poems are about swimming and his under water observations.

In response to Issue Press, Seth Crook wrote two poems. For the exhibition, The Iridescent Goosberries was printed as a large poster (above). Nightclub Under the Waves was recorded for this website.

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original prints by Issue Press from Grand Rapids, USA

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Rufus Isabel Elliot ～ Quintal Éditions

THE THIEF’S TOOTH is a response to Quintal Editions’ contribution to Magical Octopus. ‘Quintal Editions’ contribution to the publication shows soft shoreline scenes with these seaweed creatures alongside people, seals, landscapes. ‘It might seem silly to say, but these images are strangely silent to me. They seem eerily quiet, and made me whether and how these beings speak. What language would they have? Could they communicate? This became the roughness of the intervals in the music reverberating together, and their characterful shapes became the pulses I put in each note as I played it. Through the music, I wanted to recreate the strange, glowing light of these pieces from Quintal Editions, and to invite you into an ambiguous musical world. Take a score, and imagine your own version.’

Rufus Isabel Elliot is a composer and musician who lives here and there. Rufus has written funerary music for doomed spaceships and orchestral music about rotting seaweed. It cares about honesty and openness. Its work is concerned with testimony, the conditions in which one speaks out, and how those stories are passed on.

The Thief’s Tooth

6min 39sec audio + riso printed musical score.

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original prints by Quintal Éditions from Paris, France

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David Faithfull ～ Sigrid Calon

David Faithfull’s response to Sigrid Calon is two-fold. He produced a leporello and a short video in which he transponed the large square, small square, oblong, triangle, circle, half circle, quarter circle and segment from the original pages on movable surfaces.

David Faithfull is an artist, printmaker and curator based in Edinburgh. His practice involves a broad range of processes, from installation and site interventions, to artists books, multiples and murals. Current investigations include alternative printmaking processes and materials, palindromic landscapes, environmental issues, alchemy and astronomy. His family have stayed in the Quarry cottages near Tormore Quarry on Mull since the 1920’s, where David resides part of the year. Its surrounding rock-scapes feature in many of his works.

Perpetual Landscape

Silkscreen printed leporello with graphite drawings and collages on one side - on the other side foraged berry- and locally powdered rock prints accompanied by blind pressed descriptions. The red cedar cover is contour/fathom wood grain of the Knockvologan landscape with de-bossed map notations.

Perpetual Landscape

Beach print comprising of locally foraged bramble, elderberry, hawthorn, rowan & ground anorthosite, basalt, feldspar pigments in an organic biodegradable seaweed medium. The film was made at Balfour’s Bay, Erraid.

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original pages by Sigrid Calon from Tilburg, The Netherlands

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Fiona Glen ～ Hato Press

Wandering outwards from Hato Press’s exploration of repetition in erosion, printmaking and tide cycles, Fiona considered the relationship between cosmic bodies such as the moon, stars and turning Earth, and the microscopic bodies suspended in our seas. Inspired by the question of ‘who is guarding who’ from Miek’s original poem, her contribution was created in praise of phytoplankton: the collective of photosynthesising microorganisms on which nearly all life in our oceans depends. As the first ever beings to translate sunlight into fuel for life, phytoplankton were the original oxygenators of our atmosphere. To them, we owe our breath – and in concert with the sun that feeds them and the moon that moves the tides, these unsung caretakers of our planetary ecosystem currently retrieve as much CO2 from the atmosphere as all other plants on Earth put together. Fiona’s spoken poem and cyanotypes – made using handpainted negatives – combine mythic and scientific imagery in an attempt to express this vast yet delicate system of interconnection.

Fiona Glen is a writer and artist from Edinburgh who currently lives in London. Her writing explores messy embodiment, unruly ecologies, and how human beings understand themselves through other beings and things.

transient guardians, guarding transience

cyanotype & 6min audio

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original prints by Hato Press from London, England

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Katie Harris-MacLeod ～ Endless Editions

Katie Harris-MacLeod is a multidisciplinary Scottish Australian artist currently creating work across the coastal plains and hinterlands of Kabi Kabi/ Gubbi Gubbi and Jinibara country in the Sunshine Coast region of Southeast, Queensland, Australia. Her work is deeply connected to nature, the psychogeography of place, Ecofeminist thought, and the symbiotic exchanges experienced throughout the life cycle. Nuances of folklore, multiple generational narratives, femininity, loss, and isolation are all present within her work.

Ogham is the ancient Celtic language of the trees, and it is this ancestral knowledge that has been the conduit connecting Katie to the rainforests of Kabi Kabi/ Gubbi Gubbi and Jinibara country. This artwork encapsulates the symbiotic exchange between tree, moss, and human. This drawing is part of Sap Works, a series of intimate durational and ritualistic performances in which Katie intricately studies Bloodwood trees and the sap that they excrete. By mapping stressed Bloodwood trees across the Sunshine Coast region of Southeast, Queensland, Australia, and stress within her own body Katie explores the interwoven sensitive connectivities between bodies of trees and human beings, specifically the female body.

Oxygen Exchange

bloodwood tree sap, bloodwood tree twig, copper oxide ink, translucent paper

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original prints by Endless Editions from New York, USA

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Monica Haddock ～ Corners Studio

‘In these interlocking panels, handwoven hopsack and rosepath weave structures I tried to express the feel and views that I experience while swimming through the seaweed forest.’

Monica Haddock is a handweaver and natural dyer. Her studio is situated in a sheltered tidal harbour of Artun in the south-west of the Isle of Mull where she also has created natural dye gardens. Her time is divided between being Head Weaver at Ardalanish and her own studio practice, with any spare time swimming in the sea and freshwater lochs.

Swimming Amongst Seaweed I II & III

linen, wool, cotton, mohair, wood

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original prints by Corners Studio from Seoul, South Korea

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Mhairi Killin ～ Raum Press

Mhairi Killin is based on Iona. Her practice explores the island landscapes that surround and are her home, and she seeks to understand place from a specific perspective; how belief structures - religious, mythopoeic, and socio-political - have shaped the physical and metaphysical spaces she journeys through.

Between All That Was and Is is an interpretation of the mark making within the prints of Raum Press. Translating these into wood, rock and silver, the work attempts to take a visual topographical language and sink it back into the metaphysical.

Between All That Was and Is

charred wood, silver, digital print, charcoal, graphite

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original prints by Raum Press from Salamanca, Spain

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Naoko Mabon ～ Margriet Thissen

Naoko Mabon is a curator based in Oban. Informed by a lived experience as an immigrant and ethnic minority, Naoko aims to weave relationships among differences beyond common ground.

‘Octopus is called tako in Japanese. Kite is called tako in Japanese, too. I learnt about the magical phenomenon of the octopus, which led to the project inspiration: “Each tentacle of an octopus has an independent brain, yet the animal operates as one entity”. This made me think how incredibly intelligent and mysterious the octopus is by nature, with unknown - probably bottomless - capacity. I thought: If it is a magical octopus, it might be not impossible to imagine that they can even fly into the sky.

To make a robust kite that is sympathetic to both the octopus with 6 arms & 2 legs and my way of translation, I printed all 4 pages (8 images) of prints by Margriet Thissen on large Japanese washi paper, with a blue octopus image representing their beautiful blood colour. ‘

Magical Tako

washi paper, wood, cotton

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original prints by Margriet Thissen from Jan van Eyck (Maastricht), The Netherlands

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Sue Murdoch ～ Knust

Sue Murdoch is a multi-media artist for whom the garden is an extension to her studio. She is based at Pennygheal, Mull. Landscape has always been the starting point for her work and the point to which she returns, whether it be naturally evolved or the result of human habitation and toil.

The pages from Knust inspired Sue to make a selection from her oeuvre. This newly arranged ensemble draws you in a dense and texture full universe made of beach combed objects, paintings and assembled sculptures.

Treasures from Land and Sea

mixed media

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original prints by Knust from Nijmegen, The Netherlands

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Julia Parks ～ KNOCKvologan

Julia Parks responded with a serie of photograms on the Magical Octopus contribution by KNOCKvologan. In her spacial black and white compositions made with collected objects from the shore she echos the poem Land of Angry Waves and pinhole photos of rockpools.

Julia’s practice encompasses film, animation and photography, often using series of photographs and projected 16mm film. Through this medium, she explores the different relationships between landscape, place and people, often focusing on the west-coast of Cumbria where she lives. She is currently developing a moving image artwork that explores the past, present and future relationships between people and seaweed in Northern Scotland.

Sea of Angry Waves

photograms

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original prints by Knockvologan Studies, Scotland

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Giles Perring ～ kabinet.studio

‘Ready to grab any clues that were going, I elected to use the prints by kabinet.studio as a direct means of creating a score to sequence elements of two recordings I would make using my World Organ installation on Jura. The World Organ is made of 8 tubes of different lengths, based on a pentatonic scale, which listen to the world and add a harmonic element as they are activated both by the sounds around them, and the weather. I used the prints to map a sequence of cuts between two multitrack recordings I made 6 months apart, one in April 2021 on a calm day, the second in October 2021 as gales were blowing. The ‘score’ from kabinet.studio was applied to create a 12 minute sound piece, and I decided how it would determine which tubes we hear, and from which of the two recordings. kabinet.studio’s graphic used sections from an upper image to obscure parts of a lower image, and this process is mirrored in the audio.’

Particular information about this piece is to be found at exchangeart.co.uk/wp/magical-octopus-collaboration

Giles Perring is a musician and artist from Isle of Jura who works extensively as a composer, record producer and curator. Giles most recent solo work includes his music and telephony project ‘The Exchange’ and his streaming sound installation, built on Jura, audible across the planet, The World Organ.

Xa Music Ltd · 'Untitled' 21 10 21 - Giles Perring

if you’d would like to listen, Giles’ piece is best appreciated on good headphones or speakers

World Organ ©G Perring 2020 - Isle of Jura

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original prints by kabinet.studio from Antwerp, Belgium

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Christina Riley ～ Alice Schiavone

‘Responding to the work of Alice Schiavone and its themes of underwater symbiosis and co-existence, I was inspired by Alice's question on anthropomorphism and whether or not human beings are capable of seeing things from other perspectives. My contribution considers the emotions which can surface within us as we stand, crouch or swim at the edge of the sea; not only for the lives beneath the surface, but for what allows that life to exist.

Drawing on the vibrant colours of Schiavone's work I was attracted to the near-fluorescent pinks and greens of low tide, where the coralline algae glistens among glossy wrack and algae-stained barnacles, and glimpses of earth usually invisible to us astonish in tiny scenes. With Werner’s Nomenclature of Colours to hand, I began to match its colour samples to the colours I observed, filling the blanks where the book showed only a blank box where an allocation of animal, plant or mineral should sit.‘

Christina Riley, based at Troon, is using film and alternative process photography, found objects, writing and installations. Her work draws acute attention to the details of the natural world with a particular focus on the sea. In 2019 she started The Nature Library, a travelling library celebrating the power of words to connect people to land, sky and sea.

Untitled

c-prints, limpets, ink

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original prints by Alice Schiavone from Jan van Eyck (Maastricht), The Netherlands

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Brodie Sim ～ Bananafish

Brodie Sim is an artist and producer based at Balevullin on Tiree. She is interested in landscape and community as well as cross-disciplinary and collaborative projects. Brodie likes to work somewhere in the space between material and poetry.

Elsewhere, Ferrous

digital print, watercolour, Tiree marble, gold foil

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original prints by Bananafish from Shanghai, China

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Jan Sutch Pickard ～ Gato Negro Ediciones

Jan Sutch Pickard is a storyteller and poet based in Bunessan, Mull. Formerly she has been Warden of the Abbey in Iona, she co-runs the Ross of Mull Historical Centre and cultivates a small plot in the Community Garden, when not joining in demonstrations in Glasgow or at Faslane. Jan is convinced that it is vital to ‘Think globally and act locally.’

Contradictions

poem, newspaper page in empty Mexican Blossom Honey jar.

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original prints by Gato Negro Ediciones from Mexico City, Mexico

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Brian Thomas ～ Calipso Press / Martin La Roche

Inspired by the prints of Calipso Press & Martin La Roche, Brian Thomas set out to write and illustrate a series of poems. 16 + 1. The last poem is a direct response to the octopus. The recording, done in his living room, includes Brian talking about his poems revealing surprising background information.

Brian Thomas is based in Bunessan, Mull. He worked as a freelance graphic designer, teacher, art director and was tutor in art therapy in a prison. His interest in poetry has given him the vehicle to bring to an audience our fears and joys and a connection for sharing life’s dreams.