Reviewed by Aine King.

The Northlight Gallery, Stromness, continue their excellent programme of thoughtful and intriguing exhibitions with Robinson RR’s latest show, Medusa in Exile.

Appropriately scheduled to coincide with World Refugee Day, this exhibition explores the theme of migration from different angles and using a range of different media.

The titular work ‘Medusa in Exile’, is like a large, skeletal boat hull, rearing up as if storm-tossed, on the brink of pitching its cargo of stick-people overboard. The whole piece is shrink-clad in black bin-bag plastic and bristles with cable-ties. It evokes news footage of rubber boats and desperate people and is no less haunting for being all too sadly familiar. The title is a nod to Gericault’s 1819 painting ‘The Raft of the Medusa’, which might have felt a little too-clever in a less assured, heartfelt and haunting work.

‘Nirvana’ is another large cross-section of hull, less steeply pitched, becalmed. It is a ship of dreams, bedecked with gold leaf and exquisitely painted exotic flowers. These, Ralph says represent the dreams of migrants, but they are clinging to the fractured rib-bone of a boat, like those who dare the crossings, dreaming of better lives, only to end as flotsam and wreckage.

The large peices are imposing and monumental, although the materials are humble, repurposed wood and plastic. They dominate but do not over-power the smaller works in this skilfully curated show. The theme of flotsam continues in mixed-media works. ‘The Inextinguishable Colours of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion’ is a joyous assemblage of brightly coloured plastic shards all washed ashore and rescued. ‘News to Orkney’ does indeed resonate with current world events as shards of driftwood, floats, spars hang like missiles over an entrapped landscape of sand.

Robinson RR describes his work as ‘Protest art… It’s a gentle protest, but it’s a protest none the less.’ Medusa in Exile is not a ‘gentle exhibition’. It feels more like a storm-warning. It isn’t pretty, but it’s pretty powerful.