Minds, Mountains & Grasses
Above Cath Keay’s Mountain Journey currently in Elevated Dreams an exhibition at Aberdeen Art Gallery.
Elevated Dreams is a collaboration between Cath Keay, Emma Bowen and Victoria Hume and I thoroughly recommend it. It’s based on the creative practice of Antonia Jabloner, (1908 – 2002). The introductory text explains that after studying at the prestigious Kunstgewerberschule in Vienna from 1928 – 32 Antonia fled Nazi oppression and ended up working as a housekeeper in Deeside, her circumstances meant that she was unable to fulfil her creative potential. By the 1970s she was living in long-term psychiatric care in Aberdeen, where art therapist Joyce Laing, (1939 – 2022) recognised her skill.
I worked in Deeside as a nanny and cook during the summer holidays when I was an undergraduate and travelled up and down the river and across the surrounding landscape – I wonder where she had worked?
I got to know Cath Keay well when she temporarily worked as Fine Art Casting Technician in the Haldane Building at Glasgow School of Art, where at the time I was Wood Workshop Technician.
Of Mountain Journey Cath says:
This topographic form evokes the European landscapes Antonia would have traversed as a refugee. She studied needlework at the Kunstgewerbeschule Wein, the applied arts school. The cross-stitches refer to examples of her embroideries held in the Art Extraordinary collection at Glasgow Life Museums.
In the early 1990s when I first graduated I worked as a voluntary assistant to the late Mike Hennessy, then art therapist at the Royal Cornhill Hospital in Aberdeen. I didn’t work with clients, but carried out clerical tasks. One of the major projects I undertook was sorting through drawings and paintings made by Joyce Laing’s patients, by this time most care was in the community and much of the old hospital was redundant. I remember quiet, empty corridors painted in institutional pastel tones. The wards had been named after regional areas and that’s how I organised the works.
Later in her life Joyce Laing lived at Kellie Lodgings, High Street, Pittenweem. She is probably best known for her work in the Special Unit at Barlinnie Prison. She collected and exhibited what she called Art Extraordinary in part of her home. I remember seeing there the remarkable work of South Uist born Angus McPhee (1916 – 1997), Joyce wrote a book about him – Angus McPhee : Weaver of Grass.
The Art Extraordinary Collection is held by Glasgow Life Museums
Elevated Dreams
Gallery 2
Aberdeen Art Gallery
6th June 2026 – January 10th 2027
