UHI Outer Hebrides are proud to present the final major exhibition from our two honours year graduates, Sif Nielsen and Kathrhona Lawson.
The Degree Show is the final major exhibition for students on the BA (Hons) Fine Art course at UHI Outer Hebrides, delivered at the Taigh Chearsabhagh campus. Sif and Kathrhona have been working with clay and sculptural ceramics, drawing, new media and projection. They are exploring themes related to their environment – responding both to the physical surroundings (with hand dug clay, natural and found objects) as well as the cultural history of Uist (through storytelling, folklore, and Gaelic culture).
Join us to celebrate Sif and Kathrhona’s work on the opening night, 6-8pm on Friday the 27th of May. You can RSVP using the free ticketing system below if you’re planning to come along. The UHI Open Studios opens on the same evening, so make sure to check out the Studio Galleries as well while you’re here.
Sif Nielsen writes,
“My practice roots itself in my relocation to North Uist. The whoosh in the treetops now brought by the sea, rumbling and humbling with the weather running wild across open moors has brought an unforeseen sense of belonging through exposure. Exposure to Gaelic folklore brings imagination to our narrow spectrum of reception, rekindling my love for the mysterious and magical world of stories I remember from my childhood. Looking through the veil to the otherworld has become a way of exploring my relationship with the environment, how the liminal time of twilight can facilitate powerful encounters through more sensual and alert processing of our surroundings. I use ceramics as the vehicle of my island exploration. Plant ashes, rocks, and bones as well as bringing discarded man-made material to the process I seek to expose other sides to things, layers of interdependency or how subtle shifts in materiality – while familiar – can hold the uncanny and mystifying richness of stories. With ceramic works situated in dark spaces partly lit by projection, I hope to encourage curiosity, exploration, and immersion.”
Kathrhona writes,
“Stories continuously accumulate, break, fade and alter like pieces of pottery washed up on the shoreline. They are reinterpreted in relation to our own personal experience, our footprints among the layers. Marks, imprints, and lost words perpetuate, picked up by the curious, carried in pockets sometimes explored, exposed, and sometimes returned. A handful of stories from the Hebrides are deconstructed into fragments for the viewer to discover, contemplate and hopefully pass on.”
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