The nine year island mystery of the artist who disappeared

It began as a film about a maverick artist who'd established a winter arts festival on the tiny Scottish island of Papa Westray.

But it became a much stranger, sadder story which almost a decade later is told onscreen in The Artist Who Disappeared.

Filmmaker David Kew arrived on the island in February 2017 to document the Papay Gyro Nights festival, set up seven years before by his friend Sergei Ivanov and his partner Tszman Chan.

Based on an island tradition, last celebrated in 1914, it marked the first full moon of February with light, art and torchlit processions.

Sergei, a Russian immigrant, and Tszman Chan, from Hong Kong had not only revived the tradition, but persuaded artists from across the world to come to the most north westerly of the Orkney islands.

"It is an island on the edge of the world," said David.

"Sergei used to joke that it was easier to get to Hong Kong from London than it is to go from London to Papa Westray. It involves three planes and if it's too stormy or too wild you just have to wait and sometimes you couldn't get off at all."

Despite the challenge, the festival drew artists from Japan, Hong Kong, America and across Europe.

Sergei had made a name for himself since arriving in London in the early 1990s, staging exhibitions in Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Mexico, India and the UK.

Many of his works can be found in private collections in those countries and also in the USA, Canada and Australia.

It was the sale of one of those works which allowed him and Tszman to set up home on Papay – the exact proceeds matching the cost of the small farmstead they wanted on the tiny island which is just four miles long and one mile wide.

It was there they welcomed their daughter Snaedis and established their international festival.

All which makes his disappearance on 3 April 2017 so perplexing.

"You can't just disappear from Papa Westray," says Huw Williams, a BBC reporter, who took up a post at Radio Orkney in March 2017.

"It's an island off an island. So going anywhere means ferries or flights from tiny terminals where the crews know all the regular passengers well. If he'd gone from the island like that he would have been noticed."

Police Scotland launched an appeal and an air and sea search was undertaken. The population of Papay – some 75 souls – joined the search, including David Kew who was three months into his film shoot.

"I thought I would find some clue to unpack this. It's a small island, but it swallows you up."

He also had to consider what to do with the film project.

"It was such a complete shock to everybody and I thought we can't really carry on with this film. We have to stop but Tszman his partner said, no it's even more important now."

The film looks at possible reasons for Sergei's disappearance. Storyteller Tom Muir talks about his interest in sea caves.

"I had seen some of the photographs on Facebook, and I was saying he should be careful because if the sea cuts you off you're in trouble and the first thing that I thought of when he disappeared was those bloody caves."

Others talk of his fascination with the "music" of the island – a rumbling vibration which is also mentioned in Amy Liptrott's memoir The Outrun, and features in the climactic scenes of the film version starring Saoirse Ronan.

A post on social media on the day he disappeared said "10 years of island life…the sea is rising and I'm losing the appetite for farmed salmon."

"The film ends up exploring the nature of friendship and how much you can ever know somebody," says David.

"The statistics around people disappearing in the UK are quite shocking - hundreds of thousands of people who are reported missing every year with two or three thousand permanently recorded as missing and never seen again by their friends and family."

Sergei shares his name with a Russian footballer and a former Minister of Defence as well as a 19th century Russian artist.

Originally from Kazakhstan, he came to the UK in 1992, leaving his wife and two children behind. His children Pavel and Katya are included in the film. Pavel says he's proud of his father adding "everyone disappears in the end."

Katya says his family have found the grieving process difficult but believes her father would have been happy with the way he left – "like a weird old black and white movie".

Although Sergei is still listed as a missing person on the Police Scotland website, the absence of proof of life such as social media or bank account activity meant Tszman Chan – who has since moved away from the island with their teenage daughter Snaedis – has been able to have him "presumed dead" under Scots law.

As well as giving them closure, it allowed them to mark the moment with an art project which featured flags from the many artists from around the world who had worked with them on Papay.

And the film which David Kew never planned to make has also become a legacy of the artist and the art he made on the edge of the world.

The film will be screened in London next week, but he's already shown it twice in Orkney, including for the community of Papa Westray.

"I was very keen to show the film to the residents on the island first," he says.

"And they all turned out but the film finished and there was just silence and nobody spoke."

He was about to abandon a Q+A session afterwards when the first comment came.

"They were just thinking," he says.

"It brought up a lot of things for people. Things said or left unsaid. And then we started talking about the film, but also about Sergei and the island and their relationship."

"It was a cathartic moment for the islanders. Testament not just to Sergei and Tszman, but to the island itself and what it takes to live on an island like that."