North Sea Energy: An Artist’s Perspective

Sue Jane Taylor

Dornoch artist, Sue Jane Taylor, has spent most of her artistic life focusing on the North Sea. Born on the Black Isle, she saw the impact of the oil boom on Highland culture in the 1970s, and as a young graduate experienced a life-changing artistic journey on an North sea cargo supply vessel . Over the last 30 years she has gained access to extremely remote and publicly prohibited offshore installations, where she chronicles and documents the lives of offshore workers and their changing working environments. Her work raises questions about the relationship between industry, art and environment, as well as being a personal portrayal of a surreal and liminal world, which very few outsiders experience. Come and hear about the yards, coastline and people of an industry which is now moving into history, as hundreds of ageing installations are decommissioned and replaced with large-scale offshore renewables.

Sue Jane Taylor studied fine art at Gray’s School of Art, the Slade School of Fine Art, London and Konst Academie, Stockholm. She has exhibited nationally and internationally in private and public galleries and museums, including Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums, and the National Museum of Scotland. Her chapter ‘Art and the Offshore’ appears in ‘Cold Water Oil: Offshore Petroleum Cultures’, edited by Fiona Polack and Danine Farquharson, Routledge 2022. Find out more on her website.

This talk took place on Thursday 10 February 2022, 5.30-6.30pm. You can view a recording below: 

Images (left to right): Artist Sue Jane Taylor sketching Brent platform, 2018. Rope Access Technician (RAT) Nigg, 2020. Watercolour on paper.