The thing about living on an island that is only reachable by boat, Martin Creed writes, is that every time you leave you have to “watch it get smaller and smaller in the distance until it is gone [which] is amazing and sad”. The isle of Eigg is special because standing on it you can see another island that constantly appears and disappears without ever getting smaller. The window of Sweeney’s Bothy is an instrument for longing, directed at that other place out there – sometimes veiled in cloud or snowstorm, sometimes shimmering in the sun.

 

Behind the writing desk we found ourselves become Asian Connoisseurs of the scholar rock there sticking out of the ocean; a rock that educates the viewer in the art of perception and dwelling, in what it means to be somewhere.

The notions of perception and dwelling can be extended in the mind to become the practices of observation and craft, of writing and making.

But writing also shapes the land, just as the soil can teach one how to read.

While straying further and further away from common tracks we became absorbed by lumps of grey matter that, after a gentle drizzle, responded by bursting into colour – we realised right there that the thing and its name both meet upon the hand. They come forth from its silent and sensitive interaction with the world.

 

Jasper Coppes & Cristina Garriga

Supported by My Bookcase