WHEN I arrive at Peacock Visual Arts in Aberdeen, it's clear that the organisation, which celebrates its 35th anniversary today, combines its earliest roots with its current international perspectives and future ambitions.
The exhibition I've come to visit is downstairs, but upstairs in the print workshop, a former school building in the city's Castle Street conservation area, I bump into Kenny Hunter, one of Scotland's most prominent artists whose public sculptures, s
uch as Glasgow's Citizen Firefighter, have become a key part of our urban landscape.
Hunter, just back from a show with his US gallery Conner Contemporary in Washington DC, is busy making a new screenprint with Peacock's printmakers Lindsey Croall and Lloyd McNeill. Croall herself is just back from New Mexico, where she has been developing her lithography skills at the Tamarind Workshop in Albuquerque.
The group is gathered around some test prints bouncing ideas between Hunter's artistic ambitions and the printmakers' technical skills. Peacock began in 1974 as an artist-initiated enterprise: a print workshop where artists gathered to collaborate. These days, whether working in print, digital media or film and video, it remains a place where young people can learn, anyone can participate and artists of Hunter's calibre know they can seek support and advice.
In the former 18th-century workshop which serves as Peacock's gallery space, the organisation has asked 35 of its more prominent artists, supporters and collectors to choose a work made on site to mark its birthday.
Peacock's 35th anniversary should have come at one of the brightest points in the organisation's entire history. In October last year the group announced it had secured more than £9 million, of core funding towards the development of a much longed-for new arts centre, including £4.3m from the Scottish Arts Council.
Under the plans the new venue would provide world-class exhibition space alongside production facilities, and become home to the city council arts development and arts education teams as well as dance agency City Moves. Partners would include Aberdeen University and Robert Gordon University. Like Dundee Contemporary Arts it would provide an outward-looking and joined-up approach to arts provision. The architectural design by Brisac Gonzalez promised a landmark but sensitive building for Union Terrace Gardens.
However, instead of being on the final leg of fundraising, the organisation now finds itself between the proverbial rock and a hard place. The entire proposal, although it had obtained planning permission and considerable funding commitments, has fallen into a much larger area of uncertainty.
Late last year businessman Sir Ian Wood announced that he wanted to back a large-scale infrastructural scheme to deck over Union Terrace Gardens and the adjacent railway line and create a new civic square in the centre of the city. The scheme could cost up to £150m, of which Sir Ian has pledged £50m of his own money.
A technical feasibility study just published by the economic organisation ACSEF, which is backing the scheme, looks at three options for the site and is distinctly cold about the most modest proposal of an art centre and landscaping enhancement of Union Terrace Gardens. Although ACSEF assured me this week that they still want a contemporary art centre for Aberdeen, their "illustrative" designs for the most ambitious plans for the city centre, known as Options 1 and 2, don't include the plans as Peacock and their funders envisaged. Instead they suggest a contemporary arts centre is to be placed underneath a vast civic space next to extensive car parking. Glasgow's Lighthouse has now been commissioned to undertake a public consultation on use of the civic space.
Back in Castle Street, Peacock is doing what it can to keep on keeping on. There is a new and charmingly whimsical show of works in print on paper and ceramic by David Blyth. And in the 35th birthday celebrations there are works on show by acerbic illustrator Ralph Steadman, Beck's Prize-winner Toby Paterson, and Peacock founding father Arthur Watson. Among those asked to choose a work are the broadcaster Edi Stark, culture minister Mike Russell, and my fellow critic the Scotsman's Susan Mansfield.
What's clear from the selection is that Peacock has strong and lengthy ties both in the north-east and further afield. For Mansfield, a recent print by artist Anna Sedgwick, Oak Trees In Glen Tanar, is a reminder of her own father's history felling timber there. For journalist Alan Taylor, Steadman's work is close to his heart because of their mutual love or Robert Louis Stevenson. Toby Paterson's work has been selected by Jennifer Melville, who as keeper of fine art at Aberdeen City Gallery, has helped grow one of the country's best municipal galleries. Both Mike Russell and Toby Paterson choose work by Peacock's own David McCracken. Perhaps the most touching work on show is Cluttered Corner, a print made in 1974 by Louise Alexander, then a 16-year-old schoolgirl. It shows the print workshop itself as a chaotic, friendly place. Peacock has grown up since those early days and it wants to keep growing.
The organisation itself won't currently be drawn on its future, a spokeswoman told me. "As the findings of this report may be key to our project's future we can't comment until the board have seen and discussed the report with our funders. Whilst the investigation into Sir Ian's scheme has introduced considerable uncertainty about our future, Peacock remains totally committed to delivering a world-class cultural centre for Aberdeen."
One can't envy them that uncertainty. The lesson that we in the arts community have learned from wildly successful schemes like Dundee Contemporary Arts and from a succession of ill-fated lottery white elephants in England is that culture-led development only works when it is led by buildings that have clearly defined purposes, and where sectoral need and arts expertise drives the design process. Whether that focus can be kept at the heart of a much bigger scheme with inevitably much wider ambitions and interests must be giving those in the arts community some sleepless nights.
The people of Aberdeen, their council, the economic organisations and business community will need to decide how they see the future of their city centre. But their decisions will have wide implications for the Scottish cultural map far beyond Union Terrace.
In the meantime, Peacock has a clear plan, and £9m funding in place. That funding was of course based on the architectural and business plans as they stood. Scottish Arts Council co-director of arts, Iain Munro, says he is keeping his board advised of developments: "The Scottish Arts Council has committed £4.3m towards Peacock Visual Arts' proposal for a contemporary arts centre in Union Terrace Gardens which we believe is imaginative, visionary and of the highest architectural quality. Our joint board supported this project based on the original plans and designs in Union Terrace Gardens and the commitment is not automatically transferable to another project." In other words, the ties that bind public funding mean there are no future guarantees.
Where does this leave Peacock? Aged 35 and desperate to leave home, it's going to have to wait for a while before it hears whether it can spread its wings.
www.peacockvisualarts.com