lands grasping memories;

ancestral gestures

captured and

held

through the gaze

of textures

seen through time

Duthchas a Gaelic word translating to ‘a sense of belonging, where everything is linked’. This feeling was the catalyst for this journey through Scotland and France over the last 6 months.

The works on show encompass the discovery of my own Scottish and French family history; the land my ancestors have known and a new path into a deeper connection to the environment for the future. It is impossible to recount the myriad of people and places I have encountered that have led me here; from archaeologists on the Isle of Arran; archivists in Glasgow; nuns in Meaux and the rivers and paths of my past. It is as if the trail was always there waiting for me, I just needed to open the doors and follow the rose petals.

Alongside this personal discovery, the project hopes to create a framework for reconnecting to place through commonalities of seeing, moving and feeling with your surroundings. Creating collective memory may help us look back to think forward and add to our shared doors through time. 

The project has been supported by the Arts Council Englands’ developing your creative practice grant 2024 and displayed at the Scottish Gallery in St Laurent de la Cabrerisse, France in September 2024.

See

Capturing the past, seeing through time. Photographs and collages from France and Scotland.

UV printed glass panes

Steel frame

Move

Gestures and memories of action. Evocations of the gestures of my ancestors everyday; coal mining, brick making, farming.

Laser cut and etched aluminium

Reclaimed French doors

Digital print on organza

Feel

Interactions of touch. Impressions and excavations from the materials of my past. Coal from Fife, Tweed from Oban, Brick from Bonnybridge brickworks, French flour mill sack, French rose petals.

Plaster of Paris

Steel