In preparation for their upcoming residency at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland’s Climate Portal, artists Francisco Llinas-Casas and Paria Moazemi-Goodarzi spent time at Bothy Project’s Inshriach Bothy near Aviemore. There they recorded sounds, images, and impressions of the natural world which have found expression in their Feel Field project. Here they reflect on their experience at Inshriach, which became to them a creative middle ground between home and away.
ANDREA CHRISTODOULIDES: Lyon and Turnbull Residency, 2017
Big changes, rock faces, big women and singing sands
JENNY BROWNRIGG: Research Residency, 2016
Photographs of Eigg from the 1920s & 1930s: MEM Donaldson and Violet Banks. My ongoing research is writing about the early women film-makers and photographers who were documenting Scottish Highlands & Islands life in the 1920s’ and 30s’. A visit last year to Mary Ethel Muir Donaldson’s photographic collection at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery archives showed that she had made a series on Eigg. Her photographs illustrated her travel guide ‘Wanderings in the Western Highlands and Islands‘ (1921). Whilst I had been able to spend time in the places that other photographers or film-makers had lived, such as Jenny Gilbertson (1902-1990) on Shetland, and Margaret Fay Shaw (1903-2004), who stayed on South Uist and Canna, I had not yet been able to travel to experience any of the key locations that Donaldson (1876-1958) had photographed. The weeklong residency on Isle of Eigg gave me the invaluable opportunity to pinpoint then visit the locations in the photographs, taken 1918-1936. The week also allowed the chance to find out more about a second Scottish photographer, Violet Banks [1] and her photographs of Eigg from her tour of the Western Hebrides c. 1920s & 30s’.
JAMES N. HUTCHINSON: Collective & Outset Scotland, 2016
Sidhe Vicious. Had the first two photos in this blog entry been taken using a 35mm camera, I would likely be fretting about having them developed, such that they may reveal a dreadful ghostly apparition. They are pictures of burns at Bealach Clithe (above) and Cathalaidh na Marbh (below), along the stretch of road between the primary school and Cleadale, places where, in Eigg folklore, lone travellers – as I was when I took these photographs – may encounter the grimmest of all Sidhe. Appearing in the form of a little old lady, this particular Sidhe would be washing the shroud of the traveller who encountered her, in preparation for his immanent death. She is one of many Sidhe who shared the island with their human counterparts, but is the only one so specifically described. The Sidhe were believed to have been thrown out of heaven at the same time as Lucifer, but not deemed bad enough to be sent to hell. Instead, they were despatched to an intermediate world parallel to that occupied by humans, living in a state of perpetual in-between-ness. The islanders claimed that the Sidhe would occasionally intrude on human affairs to negative effect, primarily at times of transition such as beltaine, or during the birth of a child (a baby born disabled was said to have been swapped with a Sidhe, the ‘perfect’ version existing in the parallel Sidhe world).
JULIE LAING: Self-Directed Residency, 2016
Being in The Dark. I’m writing a novel set at night. I’m at Sweeney’s Bothy, run by Lucy Conway, to observe my reaction to being alone in the dark. As part of my research I’m studying the phenomenon of urban light pollution. I’ve brought with me a sodium streetlight. This distinctive orange is being replaced by white LEDs and will soon be a thing of the past. I’m interested in how it’s experienced in unexpected contexts and will be switching it on in Eigg.
The Inventiveness of Procrastination. A computer malfunction means that all my thoughts, those that I recorded at the time, are lost. Now I have the memory of those records of my thoughts. And photographs and drawings of course. Here I will note them down for you:
Outward. My departure from the city is honoured by the appearance of deer playing in the Clyde estuary; a stag, hidden in the woods; waterfalls; gorges. I’m still on the train. I didn’t have time for breakfast or to withdraw cash. Not enough signal to use the wireless card machine on the snack trolley. Reading about post-war art movements, my stomach complains: ZERO ZERO ZERO.
The boat (after some soup). Heinz Mack’s theories of constant motion are further undermined. Cloudy arrival. Eddie in a Land Rover, first sight of the bothy over the ferns.
So, after the initial excitement of arriving, solo: no dog, no child, I sit at the window, drawing feverishly, like I have to prove the value of solitude. I forgot my ruler, I search the bothy for edges: a knife, a spatula, a trivet. The drawings are not very good.
I leave my work out in the rain. Morning. The colours do not wash off.
Clouds lift. Sunshine. A visit to the singing sands, cow sentries along the cliff top. Rock forms and waterfalls, the sands stay silent.
So, I plough into my books, which I should have already read, and the text I should have already written. I distract myself by finding more edges to draw.
The inventiveness of procrastination sees me dancing to the sunset. Light shows to rival the largest stadiums. Beams strobing across the sea.
I rarely photograph sunsets.
Third day in, I only leave the cabin to relieve myself, I am trying to write.
Next day, I walk on the beach, discover skeletons and re-write everything, scrawling in a notebook, whilst perched uncomfortably on a boulder.
It does not look like Scotland in September.
I walk an hour and a half to find internet and send the writing away. An hour and a half to return to my solitude.
The following days, I carve up the map of the island, selecting one area to explore. I collect the same objects that all visitors collect, shells, sea-worn rocks, bones and plants.
As the sun sets, the lamp gives me a fixed shadow to work by. I draw around the outlines of my collection, cheating, repeating, shading, making it up.
Denied access to Massacre Cave, I meet a family who have just moved to Eigg, they take me to Cathedral Cave, switching prospective fear for awe. As I attempt to return, I lose the path momentarily and discover a massacre. A lamb. I collect the bones, some weathered, some pink.
There are no batteries in my camera.
I make a new friend. And break a couple of rules.
SHIREEN TAYLOR: Self-Directed Residency, 2015
The Inventiveness of Procrastination. A computer malfunction means that all my thoughts, those that I recorded at the time, are lost. Now I have the memory of those records of my thoughts. And photographs and drawings of course. Here I will note them down for you:
An Acrostic of Appreciation for Sweeney’s Bothy and the Isle of Eigg Sweeney In Seamus Heaney’s poem, Sweeney is “wind-scourged, stripped/like a winter tree/clad in black frost/and frozen snow.” But the bothy has a warm hearth, the best designed garlic crusher on the planet, and a hot outdoor shower for use in rainstorm or starlight.
Wonder “How strange,” wrote Hugh Miller, “that [these seas] should have once thronged with reptiles more strange than poet ever imagined…”
Echo What creates those meanders across the surface of the sound on a calm day? The paths of breezes? The borders of different bodies of seawater? I was told they were the tracks of freshwater streams flowing out from the island.
Every flower, every rock, every moment. In geological time, the cliff behind the bothy is a wave a thousand foot high. And it will come crashing down. (Elsewhere, Kathleen Jamie writes: “Wind and sea. Everything else is provisional. A wing’s beat and it’s gone.”)
Not known What to make of great round stones in the rocks beyond the Singing Sands? Giant fossilised bubbles? Fossilised stromatolites? What?
Exploration “The feeling of intelligibility is like an ocean surrounding the small island of things we truly know…We are engaged in a fragile ongoing project of making sense.”
Yesterday Imagining Rùm as it was: a volcano 10,000 feet high. Imagining Rùm as it was: under a mile of ice.
Story Duncan MacClellan of Tigh an Sitheanan lost four sons to the Great War.
Bed A platform lifted up like a nest on the branches of a tree. Good for sky dreams.
Oak Scything bracken to allow the saplings some light, I took the top off an oak. Fxxx.
Tarn Studying the tracks of the wind racing over the surface of a miniature tarn* on Beinn Bhuidhe. Beyond, across a wide blue sea, the Cuillin Skye-line.
Hebrides You may go days without seeing them and then, over a blue sea or over a golden sea, 30 miles beyond the southern tip of Rùm, there they are: Barra, Vatersay and Sandray.
Yes Skye Red and Skye Black, brewed by the Isle of Skye Brewing Co. and sold at the Isle of Eigg Shop, are both good beers. I didn’t get around to trying the others.
Caspar Henderson is the author of The Book of Barely Imagined Beings. He is writing A New Map of Wonders. He stayed in Sweeney’s Bothy from 18 to 25 July 2015.
* Tarn – northern English dialect for small mountain lake. In Scots, a lochan I guess
CASPAR HENDERSON: Residency, 2015
An Acrostic of Appreciation for Sweeney’s Bothy and the Isle of Eigg Sweeney In Seamus Heaney’s poem, Sweeney is “wind-scourged, stripped/like a winter tree/clad in black frost/and frozen snow.” But the bothy has a warm hearth, the best designed garlic crusher on the planet, and a hot outdoor shower for use in rainstorm or starlight.
TANITH MARRON: Self-Directed Residency, 2014
In November 2014 I undertook a residency at the Inshriach Bothy for one week. through mixed media drawing, photography and found object I used the time as a source of exploration into the subject of experiencing place.
RACHAEL BERMAN MELVILLE: Self-Directed Residency, 2015
Day 1 - Monday, March 23, 2015. It was dark before, unseen. Now it is morning. Blue skies, the ocean. Two waking hours on Mallaig and I felt I knew the place. It is a beautiful little port town with much seafood to offer. After a rain shower and a rainbow, I return to my tiny, clean hotel room and gather my belongings.
PROJECT!!WAKAKA: Residency, 2015
the longest week/ let’s make plans to struggle for less work/ to really…/ be with the children/ look after them/ look at them/ listen to them/ write, read and talk together/ think about the way we use words with each other