SIAB \ DRIFT, Solo Exhibition, An Lanntair 

Created for the Clàr x An Lanntair 2023 Digital Art and Music Commission, SIAB | DRIFT is a series of three installations that seek to draw out the juxtapositions of Hebridean weather lore and our current understanding of the natural environment. The works are kinetic structures comprising wood, steel and found objects alongside commonly occurring natural materials of the Hebrides. The relationship of the people of the Gaidhealtachd with their surrounding landscape has been ever-changing for the past millennia, from Pre-Christian Animists to subsistence Crofters. But only in the most recent fraction of this long history have we begun to stray from the once close bonds to the land. Inspired by the Gàidhlig proverbs, sayings and stories of weather lore (one of the many ways in which the people of the Highlands and Islands have retained knowledge and understanding of the natural world) the work aims to highlight granular aspects of weather events, the feelings they evoke and ways in which we interpret them to amplify our current disconnect from nature in the modern world. The pieces are arranged to work together in symphony or alone to create a sensory curve of the audio, visual and textural memories of the ways in which we read changes in our surrounding environment. These pieces sit alongside works from the earlier project: A’ Cunntadh an Uspag , created by the Artist during the Tobar An Dualchais x Atlas Art Summer Artist In Residence 2022.