Current Exhibition

The Miniature Mountaineers
Climb the Old Man of Hoy

Saturday 8th August – Saturday 12th September

Under the direction of artist Stephen Livingstone the Miniature Mountaineers are recreating the iconic 1967 scaling of the Old Man of Hoy. The heroic pair of vintage Action Man figures have re-enacted many historic mountain climbs on the shelves and walls of important libraries and archives, including Everest 1953 at the Royal Geographical
Society, K2 1954 at the National Library of Scotland and the North Face of the Eiger 1975 at Ushaw College Library.
Now the mountaineers take on the epic challenge of climbing the hempcrete walls of the Sarah Nelson Gallery and Studio.

Stephen Livingstone has created a series of limited edition prints to mark the event which will also include a display of handmade books, a recreation of Everest Base Camp and an opportunity for children to make their own pipe cleaner mountaineers and live draw the climb.

The Old Man of Hoy
In 1966 mountaineers Chris Bonington and Tom Patey climbed the Old Man of Hoy, a spectacular 137 metre-high sea stack off the coast of Hoy in the Scottish Orkney Islands. The following year they returned with fellow climbers Joe Brown, Pete Crew, Dougal Haston and Ian McNaught-Davis and a large BBC outdoor broadcast unit to reconstruct the climb for live television.

The live documentary feed following the climbers in their bid for the summit was broadcast over two days in July 1967. The climb was difficult but largely uneventful. The broadcast was revolutionary, preempting Nasa’s live updates from the Apollo Missions the following year.

Heavy tv cameras were hoisted into precarious locations on the surrounding cliffs and a team of intrepid climber-camera operators and sound engineers positioned on ledges on the Old Man used hand-held cameras and microphones to capture the climbers in close-up. In addition the climbers themselves were issued with small film cameras to provide dramatic images as they negotiated the rock face.

The resulting live footage was fed by miles of electrical cables to base camp on the island where it was edited and transmitted via a relay of radio masts around the British Isles to the television sets of 10 million viewers.

The Miniature Mountaineers

Stephen Livingstone Biography

Stephen Livingstone is an artist based in the North East of England whose work deals principally with human impact upon landscapes and habitats. His projects reference museum collections and archives and he frequently works in collaboration with academics and experts in a wide variety of fields, from soil scientists, ornithologists and archaeologists to mountaineers, beekeepers and boat builders. Stephen has developed exhibitions and installations for many museums and institutions such as the British Library, the National Trust and the Museum of Art and Design in New York. 

The Miniature Mountaineers were formed in in 2017 and they have recreated many historic mountain expeditions climbing the shelves of important libraries and archives around the country. Their achievements have been celebrated in exhibitions at Durham University’s Oriental Museum and Keswick Museum.