Behind the Big Blue Doors
Cities change. Working populations come and go; buildings are erected, demolished or re-purposed according to socio-economic influences. Leith was once a busy port, taking trading ships from all over the world, home to a fishing fleet and Royal Navy ships. There were thriving maritime businesses onshore. Now the Shore at Leith is for waterfront leisure - cafes, bars and restaurants have replaced chandlers, victuallers and merchants’ trading premises.
But among it all, behind the big blue doors of a Victorian shed, some of the former ways still continue. Cutting, drilling, welding, machining, pressing and rolling, the staff of George Brown and Sons carry on the noble work of fabrication and engineering. We should celebrate that. And we might take note that since it was founded in 1828 George Brown and Sons has always been a family business.
This George Brown print (one of eight) is At the Shore, Leith: Engineering and Fabrication (VIII). I was wanting to make clear that they are all scenes of manufacturing at The Shore. I thought that this deserved recognition, since so little of Leith’s manufacturing tradition is left today.

North Sea Coast Series
You couldn’t go anywhere during the first lockdown in 2020, not even to the end of your street. So we dreamed of journeys instead – in my case, places on the North Sea coast I’d seen, or would like to see. Mist and rain, greys and Prussian blues, fogs, sandbanks, the cry of seagulls, foghorns, the sound of waves crashing on the shore, the feel of the wind, ships and turbines…sometimes cerulean and azure blues, rocky shores, gannets, sparkling seas and beach cafes. And, of course, petro-chemical works. North Sea Spirit by Benjamin Walker and Knee-Deep in the North Sea by The Portico Quartet suited my mood. I cut the blocks for this series while sitting at my kitchen table.
“I thought of the abandoned Art Deco outdoor pool at Tarlair north of Aberdeen. It faces north, set in a cove beneath dark cliffs - it must have been cold swimming there. It’s an architectural precursor of the white concrete lighthouse above the rocks at Fife Ness. And there is brutalism on the North Sea shore. The Nazis’ huge concrete defences ran through France and the Low Countries to Scandinavia, and some of its forbidding wreckage remains today. Parts of the Atlantic Wall were strangely architectonic; it’s claimed that their aesthetic influenced postwar Brutalist architecture.
I imagined sailing high above the Humber and out to sea, there to see trawlers, wind turbines and oil platforms. Who wouldn’t dream of that? As we know, the Netherlands are a heavily populated country and space is at a premium, so people aren’t choosy about where they enjoy their summer. And I like that
Ijmuiden Beach Café: It’s inspired by a real scene I saw near the Ijmuiden ferry port. People were enjoying the beach, and refreshments in the café, regardless of a petrochemical works looming above them.

Edgelands…
The land that is neither city nor countryside, but somewhere in between. Container yards, business parks, scrapyards, electricity substations, mobile phone masts, business parks, big sheds, landfill sites - you know it when you see it.
There’s a strange beauty about these places; often they’re a haven for wildlife too. The foremost poets of the edgelands are Paul Farley and Michael Symmons. Their book Edgelands - Journeys Into England’s New Wilderness is a masterpiece. Here Is an excerpt discussing mobile phone masts:
“Here’s an edgelands spiritual exercise. Head for the scrubland outside Big Storage or the B & Q Warehouse, where the pallets rise like a fortress over the razor-wire fence. Stand like a latter-day St. Sebastian, and open yourself to the multiple messages; wireless, emails and mobile phone calls cutting through you. Sift through the trivia, the cold calls, the soam, until you reach the desperate evocations of love. loss, fear. Listen to them whisper as they pass
through you. Take on the cares of the world.
Dungeness: Which scares you most - the decommissioning nuclear power station or the pit bulls? Being chased by a junkyard dog is thrilling. So long as the dog doesn’t catch you. ■

Info: This exhibition took place at The Leith Makers Gallery on Leith Walk. All the pieces here are colour lino cuts. You can see much more of Alastair’s work at: ajkinroy.format.com