An oil painting of Aberdeen Harbour showing a row of docked oil ships.
Past exhibitions

Age of Oil

–

National Museum of Scotland

Exploring the people and places of Scotland’s offshore energy industry, this contemporary art exhibition showcased the work of visual artist Sue Jane Taylor who has worked in some of the most remote and challenging environments in Scotland.

This multimedia exhibition brought a unique perspective to the relationship between art, environment and industry while revealing an alien way of life on board a North Sea oil platform.

Linking closely to themes introduced in the Energise gallery, this exhibition considered the future of energy in Scotland and the challenges of removing a structure the size of the Eiffel Tower from the middle of the North Sea from the artist’s perspective.

An Age of Oil publication featuring Sue Jane Taylor's works and diary extracts is available to buy from the Museum shop.

Exhibition highlights

About the artist

Sue Jane Taylor has spent over thirty years recording the lives of workers in the North Sea oil and gas industry. Her work extends to cover the offshore renewable energy industry, where she has followed developments from fabrication to installation. Taylor has exhibited, carried out public commissions and held artist-residencies nationally and internationally. These images are a selection of Sue Jane Taylor's work from projects she has undertaken over the last ten years.

You might also like

  1. A colour photograph of a close-up of some wooden sticks with number pairs separated by diagonal lines.

    Napier's bones: The logarithmic genius who revolutionised calculations

    Science and technology

    Written by Dr Tacye Phillipson
    Find out how this brilliant Scottish mathematician and occultist invented a method of calculation that accelerated scientific discovery.In 1614, Edinburgh-born Renaissance scholar John Napier (1550-1617) invented logarithms. A means of…
    Long read
  2. A series of light brown cards with patterns of holes punched into them sticthed together and hanging looped on a wooden frame

    The Jacquard loom: Innovation in textiles and computing

    Science and technology, Scotland

    A handloom in our collection was used for weaving silk at Stonehouse in Lanarkshire in the 19th century. It has a Jacquard attachment which allows complex patterns to be woven. The punch cards used in the Jacquard mechanism laid the…
    Short read
  3. An astronaut in an astronaut suit stands in a studio holding a camera on a tripod.

    Broadcasting from the Moon: The first lunar camera

    Science and technology

    Apollo 11 was the first manned mission to land on the Moon on 20 July 1969. NASA used technology first developed in 1928 by the Scottish innovator John Logie Baird to develop a small, robust television camera that enabled the live…
    Short read