Year of the Light: Discovery Point in Dundee celebrates with a selection of maritime artwork

Exhibition: Year of the Light, Discovery Point Cafe Gallery, Dundee, October 15 2011 - January 5 2012

The Bell Rock Lighthouse is considered one of the world's great feats of engineering. It is built on a treacherous submerged reef 11 miles out to sea from Arbroath harbour and is the oldest rock lighthouse in the world.

Bell Rock was constructed between 1807 and 1810 by Robert Stevenson, the father of the great lighthouse building family and grandfather of Robert Louis Stevenson. This dramatic manmade feature seems to rise right up from the ocean.

It was an extremely challenging and hazardous job to complete. Those building the lighthouse could only work on it at low tide and had to live on a boat for a month a time while they were working there. A lamp was finally lit there on February 1 1811.

The lighthouse has saved thousands of lives over the centuries by alerting vessels en route to Arbroath harbour or sailing up the east coast of dangerous rocks below the surface. It has survived bombing and machine gun attack during the Second World War, as well as fires and a helicopter crash.

The Year of the Light exhibition is inspired by the lighthouse's bicentennial and is a celebration of maritime life of the north east. The artworks in acrylic, pastel, mixed media, watercolour and oil all feature aspects of life by or on the sea, particularly the Angus coast.

The exhibition features the work of artists who all work within a 30-mile radius of Arbroath, including Sheila MacFarlane, Morag Muir, Maurice Forsyth-Grant, Brian Petrie, Rebecca Westguard and Jim Dunbar, Vice President of the Royal Society of Watercolourists.

• Open 10am-5pm (11am-5pm Sunday). Admission free.
  

For more information about the Year of the Light visit the Bell Rock Lighthouse website.