The Library has two new exhibitions.
Artist and poet, Alec Finlay, is currently Leverhulme artist-in-residence at the University of Stirling, working in collaboration with Professor Kathleen Jamie in the School of Arts and Humanities.
The installation adapts a 19th century Nether hive system for beekeeping. In this Nether hive the knowledge of books is exchanged for the sweetness of honey as, each week, a different book relating to bees is displayed. Some of the ideas and images in these books will appear in a series of poems composed by Finlay during his residency, published online: http://www.the-bee-bole.com
Discussing this new work the artist recalls his memory, “of wandering through the library during my last few weeks at Stirling, having completed the required work of my degree, making my own flights between different book stacks: poetry, geology, oriental studies, psychology, like a bee, moving from blossom to blossom. This still represents a kind of ideal to me, and is a practice that underlies my art to this day”.
Accompanying the installation, there is a display of books from the Archives and Special Collections, all of which have some connection to bees.
Plate from J. G. Wood, The common objects of the country, 1858
