Michael Newgass
Two Sacred Places
Calanais is on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. It is an ancient place with circles of standing stones dating back four or five thousand years. Even before the circles were built, strips of barley were cultivated there. The stone circles were sacred places associated with the turning seasons and the Goddess worship of the old European religion. They seem to be aligned with a gap in the hills where the full moon skips the horizon at the winter solstice. We can be sure that the turn of the year was of huge significance to our ancestors.
Legends suggest that festivals associated with the seasons involved dances around the stone circles. What we know of the circular dances of the San people or the Native Americans makes it easy to imagine how this worked. The circular dance, on and on, can induce a state of trance.
The Holy Island of Lindisfarne lies off the coast of Northumberland. It is connected to the mainland at low tide. King Oswald settled the bishop Aidan there around 634, and charged him with the conversion to Christianity of the people on Northumberland. Aidan and his monks lived in gaunt austerity. One of those twelve original English pupils of Aidan had been Eata, and it was he who sent Cuthbert to Lindisfarne as prior in 664. It was in honour of Cuthbert that the famous Lindisfarne Gospels were written and illuminated by Eadfrith, probably around 688.
Saint Aidan and Saint Cuthbert were originally buried on the island and Lindisfarne became a place of pilgrimage. The Pilgrims had to walk across the sands at low tide. Little piles of stones were put there by the monks to mark the way and later a row of poles.
The pictures in this exhibition were made in November 2002. They form two series. The pictures of Calanias are about the energy of the stones and the dance. They culminate in a sort of trance. The pictures of Lindisfarne are about the asceticism of the pilgrim's journey across the tidal flats. As the tide comes in, the poles and the horizon seem to offer a fleeting vision of the Cross.
Calanais | start slide show
Lindisfarne | start slide show