Since 2021, Moray based artists...
Lynne Strachan and Mary Bourne have been working together as Cabrach Reconnections, researching and responding to this isolated upland area. In The Cabrach, in common with many remote, rural Scottish communities, the pressures of depopulation and change seem to be becoming ever more acute.
In their latest exhibition, Lynne and Mary consider these pressures, how lives have altered and what the future might hold. People have always lived from the land, harvesting its resources one way or another. Farmers have learned to work with the soil and seasons to grow food, carefully locating their farms in the most favourable places – and now, in response to climate change, which is blowing in all kinds of uncertainties, the weather is being scientifically harnessed to help feed our energy needs.
Over the course of 2023,
Mary and Lynne developed a public artwork recording all the dwellings that they could identify in the area from the last two to three centuries. This artwork was cast in bronze and is sited permanently in The Cabrach.
Learning the names of these houses, through talking to local residents, corresponding with members of the diaspora and combing through old maps and documents, has been an extraordinary experience, which has also informed some of the work in the Living from the Land exhibition. The histories of the families who have lived here, where they came from and where they ended up, show over and over again how one place connects to another. At the same time, the locations of their dwellings show how intimately understood the character of the landscape has always been, and how people have always located themselves in the best way to serve their needs.
As The Cabrach Trust cleared parts of its site ready for future developments, Lynne and Mary rescued some tools that had been custom-adapted for the user’s needs, a reflection of the ingenuity and make-do and mend philosophy of an age before internet shopping.
As they unearthed these tools, the Dorenell turbines gleamed on the horizon, streamlined manifestations of the international cutting edge technologies now sweeping across the land, encapsulating a broader change in society away from self-sufficiency towards globalisation.
LIVING FROM THE LAND EXHIBITION GALLERY
Funded by Foundation Scotland from the EDF Renewables Dorenell Wind Farm Community Benefit Fund.
CUSTOM HOUSE, LEITH
2ND SEPTEMBER - 10TH SEPTEMBER 2023
