A new artwork has recently been installed in the grounds of the Bonhoga Gallery at Weisdale Mill in Shetland. The ‘enclosed garden’ is the culmination of a month’s residency by artist Carol Dunbar, based at The Booth in Scalloway and at the gallery itself.

The residency scheme, funded by the Scottish Arts Council Lottery Fund and Shetland Arts Trust, allows the artist not only to spend time on their own work but also to lead a variety of activities that involve the local community.

Over the three years that the scheme has been running, artists have been able to work in schools, lead community workshops, work with locally-based artists and in Carol’s case, develop an ‘on-site’ work.

The enclosed garden is fenced with panels that have been screenprinted with images of some of the wild flowers and plants that grow along the burn at Weisdale. The interior has been planted with different varieties of thyme, which as they grow will form a scented ‘carpet’.

Carol’s idea in creating the garden is to explore our desire to control nature, and to bring something of the outside to the inside: from the external ‘wilderness’ to the cultivated or ‘civilised’ interior space.

The noust-like garden can be seen easily from the road. Another of the works completed during the residency can be viewed from the Gallery Café. Visitors to the Gallery last month were able to make and add their own flags to the collection of Iris Flags that have been placed on the bank above the burn.

Though Carol Dunbar lives and works in Orkney, this was only her second visit to Shetland: a place very different in appearance, but with a community equally as welcoming as her home islands. She hopes to have some images and further information from her residency online soon at www.caroldunbar.co.uk , where some of the sources she has used for her work in Shetland can be found in the meantime.