I first saw Beka’s ‘Clover’ image at a show at An Lanntair, where I was invited to show one of my own sculptures. The size of it was key, altering your perception, changing your viewpoint it made you feel small, its subject confirmed it.

As I looked up to view the flower from an insects perspective, it became abstract, almost sculptural reminding me of monumental work I’d recently seen at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.

Printed in large scale format almost a metre square ‘Clover’ commands a powerful place in the collection. I’m also grateful to Beka for kindly allowing me to include the other images from the ‘Flowers’ series in our virtual gallery. I’m looking forward to exploring interesting CGI ways to display them.

Beka Globe

Beka moved to the Isle of Harris when she was 11 years old. Her father, the renown sculptor Steve Dilworth, had relocated the family to find more inspirational surroundings, they certainly found it on Harris.

She studied photography at Napier University in Edinburgh in the 1990’s, and now returning to Harris to raise her own family, her photographic work has developed a unique style which reflects the dramatic environment and contrasting boundaries that these isles have to offer.

With the Hebridean flowers, Beka felt it was important to use natural light. All back lit, she wanted the feeling of being a fairy at the bottom of the garden, underneath and surrounded by flowers, photographing them almost from below looking up, like an insects eye view. Capturing a presence of being amongst the flowers.

In an interview  with David Lintern for Walk Highlands Beka recalls…

“The flowers were about going deep, into the detail, the structure of life, the organic side of Harris, still very much part of the landscape, but on another level. Everything is connected and I see the flowers as a whole new way of looking, from the perspective of a bee… They were taken with natural daylight in super macro, and in some cases using multiple stacked exposures to create a different perspective.”

https://www.themissionhouse.co.uk/

My first meeting with Nickolai was at The Mission House, the converted church that he and his photographer wife Beka Globe now call home and studio. 
My visit was not initially about art, more about the church, as I had just gained permission from the owners to explore possibilities at Baile na Cille church and I was hungry for ideas and how-to’s etc..

But on entering it was the artworks that impressed easily as much as the Mission House they were surrounded by. That was back in 2019, now I’m back in 2024 to pickup a ceramic piece I’ve selected for the collection, ‘Geo’ - a work that reflects the dramatic nature of the east coast of Harris, complete with its own cracked glass lochan.

Nickolai Globe

The ceramic works of Nickolai Globe are influenced directly by the environment of the rugged North West. Drawing from elements of Zen and the unpredictable, his work reflects rather than emulates nature.

Nickolai was born into a bucket of clay! He was raised in the family pottery (Lotte Glob) in the Far North West of Scotland. In 1986 worked with the Ceramic artist Erik Nyholm in Denmark. There he worked on large scale architectural ceramics and sculpture. Following Denmark, Nickolai studied traditional production under Tim Holloway where gained discipline in producing traditional, functional, wood fired, stoneware pottery whilst studying ceramics at Southampton University. 

In 1989 Nickolai moved to Australia where he set up his own studio and produced sculptural ceramics and exhibited widely. During this time he worked closely with Thanakupi - Aboriginal Elder and international renowned ceramic artist. Now he has fused himself to The Isle of Harris, where the influence of his ironage nordic bogman ancestors have fluxed his Wabi-sabi pre-occupation to create his archaic works. His new work takes ceramics to the edge of craft, where sculpture and function merge. His high fired stoneware bowls and vessel forms become geological and carry in them a deep reflection of the terrain of the Hebrides. 

The work produced in the studio is high fired stoneware, incorporating local minerals and fused glass. His techniques involve firing the ceramic pieces to very high temperatures, transforming the clay to a rock like material and fusing the glass with the clay. The subtle colours are achieved through careful use of metal oxides: cobalt, copper, manganese and iron. These innovative techniques create completely unique results. The work is vitrified and eternal, like stone. It will last for thousands of years, never fading, just remaining as a fragment of time, movement, energy and thought.

https://www.themissionhouse.co.uk/

Sarah's work has always intrigued me, with her inclusion of waste and discarded plastic, and unnatural objects into otherwise rugged landscapes.
 In 2021 her work 'A Road Less Travelled' was selected for the Hulabhaig Curator purchase prize, its suggestion that our islands are not quite as perfect as we hope they are, reflect a reality which many visitors and incomers are happy to ignore in endless social media posts of beaches and sunsets.

Sarah Bold

Originally from Australia, Sarah now lives in the Western Isles of Scotland. She is a landscape painter interested in the significant impact of human activity upon the planet’s ecosystems, geology and climate, and more specifically how this relates to the rural environment. Issues such as climate change, the coastal and marine environment, agriculture, isolation and migration underpin her work, whilst considering our transitory existence in relation to the geological age of the Earth. 

Her paintings are in oil paint and hover between figurative and abstraction. She studied painting at the University of Arts, London and is a graduate of Turps Banana Painting Correspondence course. Sarah is a recent recipient for the Society of Scottish Artists mentor/mentee yearly programme. Sarah was awarded the Mall Galleries’ ING Discerning Eye Landscape Prize 2023.

Recent exhibition's include Art On A Post Card International Women’s Day 2024, Detail Art Gallery, Edinburgh, Irving Gallery, RSW Annual exhibition, Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London, Wells Contemporary, Royal Scottish Academy Annual. Previously Sarah has won the Jackson’s Painting Landscape Prize, was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Art Prize and received the Hulabhaig Curator’s Purchase Award.

https://www.sarahbold.com/

https://www.instagram.com/sarahabold/

On a visit to Reothart nan Ealain, a new Gaelic visual arts hub here in the Outer Hebrides, while in conversation with Mairi Gillies its proprietor I was distracted by an artwork displayed to my right, not sure why, maybe my ramblings about our bad summer weather was boring myself as much as Mairi. The work was Aiteal ('Transient view'), when Mairi explained more and revealed the artist was Sandra Kennedy I knew I had found another artwork for the collection. Curiously I think the artwork was more descriptive of our bad summer weather than my ramblings could ever be.

Sandra Kennedy

Sandra is a Gaelic speaker from the small village of Marvig in the South Lochs area Isle of Lewis, a very rugged landscape with sheltered sea lochs and a natural harbour.

Her local landscape and its wildlife provides her with inspiration and a love for art, and when she left school she went on to study sculpture at Grays School of Art. After college she was able to gain valuable experience in film animation and worked on projects across Scotland, leading on to an interest in storytelling, which then resulted in a post graduate degree in scenography (directing and designing performance) at Central St Martins.

Sandra works across multiple disciplines as required for each project but maintains a strong discipline to work based around drawing.

She has found that living on the island full time has required a willingness to adapt and improvise. This is reflected in the many ways she has been working over the years.

https://www.instagram.com/sandrakennedyart

Photo by Shannon Tofts.

Re-Soundings is presented here as part of the Hulabhaig Collection by kind permission of the artist.

Mhairi Killin

Mhairi works with drawing, print, sculpture and installation in an ongoing exploration of the landscapes that surround her and are her home. Her practice seeks to understand place from a specific perspective; one of inquiry into how belief structures - religious, mythopoeic, and socio-political - have shaped the physical and metaphysical landscapes she journeys through.

Residencies on several of the neighbouring islands to her home on Iona have developed her perception of island environments “as historical and mythological sites of convergence between elemental forces of nature, human life and the divine”.1 Through a digging down into the cultural ideology of place, her practice explores a consideration of “ the known world and the unknown world; one world viewed from a socio-historical perspective, and the other seen fleetingly through the wilderness, from a mythopoeic perspective”.2

Past work has explored the iconoclasm of the Reformation and its impact on the auditory landscapes of the islands of Lewis and Iona, http://www.resoundings.com

A recent focus has been on the presence of the MoD in the Hebrides and throughout 2021/2022, she has worked on a project commissioned by COMAR in partnership with the Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust and in collaboration with composer Fergus Hall researching the impact of anthropogenic sound, during the NATO exercise Joint Warrior, on the behaviour of cetaceans in the Sea of the Hebrides.

The project sits within a wider question as to whether we can consider the extensive presence of the MoD in the Hebrides as a form of extraction; specifically has this very particular presence resulted in or been facilitated by a psychological disarticulation between a particular culture and its immediate environment and if so, what are the impacts on the ethnic and natural ecologies of that landscape?
1. Coburn, G. (2013) Geopoetics Journal, Stravaig #2. Retrieved from http://www.geopoetics.org.uk/online-journal/stravaig-issue-2/
2. Bateman, M (2012) The Otherworld. Series of Lectures. Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, UHI, 2012

Mhairi has exhibited globally and regularly works on commission and as artist in residences.

Full details can be seen on her website.

https://mhairikillin.com/biography

https://mhairikillin.com/

I'm delighted to include Mhairi's 'The Darkest Dawn' in the collection, when I first saw it in 2019 it was presented at An Lanntair as part of the Iolaire centenary exhibition, I was emotionally moved by it's intensity and poignancy. The impact immediately required further attention which led me to investigate more about the Iolaire and the rocks known as Biastan Thuilm (The Beasts of Holm). This is what art is meant to do.

The Darkest Dawn is presented here as part of the Hulabhaig Collection by kind permission of the artist.

Mhairi Law

Mhairi Law is an award winning photographer based on the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. Using medium-format film, her work looks to the landscapes around her, with her interests often exploring how cultures historically and currently bond visually with their environments.



In 2018, Mhairi established Island Darkroom, photography gallery and textiles studio on the Isle of Lewis. Island Darkroom hosts contemporary photography exhibitions, workshops in analogue processes and Artist Residencies.

Education
Edinburgh Napier University, BA(Hons) Photography and Film, 2010 - 2014
Ryerson Univeristy, Toronto, 2012
Stevenson College, Edinburgh, HND Film and Television, 2009 - 2010

https://mlawphotography.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mhairi_law/

https://islanddarkroom.com/

During my period of curating exhibitions at Baile na Cille church in Uig, I was keen to include audio visual work as much as possible and Fraser’s enigmatic imagery of an abandoned home in his film ‘Tiugainn Dachaidh’ fitted perfectly. Submitted to the Uig Open Winter Online Exhibition I was pleased when our selectors chose it for the Reasort Estate award.

Fraser then approached me with an idea for an immersive audio visual experience centred on the church itself. An experience I would have loved to have seen through, however the sale of the Baile na Cille church sadly prevented its progress.

Fraser MacBeath

Fraser MacBeath is an audiovisual artist, composer and field recordist from the Isle of Lewis. His practice looks in part to continue the legacy left by 20th-century field recordists who documented rural Scottish culture, while also using the material to create contemporary artworks that reflect modern realities. 

Using the mediums of sound, film and installation, Fraser creates work which combines elements of sound art and ambient music with abstract film and immersive environments. His works often embody a dual nature. One which marries traditional elements with contemporary audiovisual technology. Creating narratives which weave past and present, evoking reflections on memory, sense of place, cultural identity, and the relationship between tradition and modernity.

Education
Master of Design 2021, Sound For The Moving Image, The Glasgow School of Art, Distinction (First Class).
Bachelor of Arts w/Honors 2022, Audio Production, SAE Institute Glasgow, 2.1 (Upper Second).

Awards
Royal Scottish Academy 197th Annual Exhibition, RSA Benno Schotz Prize for the most promising work by a Scottish artist under 35.
Hulabhaig Uig Open,  Rèasort Estates Award, 2021.

https://frasermacbeath.squarespace.com/

https://www.instagram.com/frasermacbeath.av

I met Calum Angus in his office in Stornoway, to pick up a print I was buying for the collection. I’d recently seen his exhibition ‘Indigenous’ and was interested in a work called Frozen Bait that wasn’t in the exhibition but I had seen referenced in a book I was researching. His work intrigued me, and in particular his early still life work. So much so that it wasn’t long before I had committed to buying four of his photographs.

Calum Angus Mackay

Calum Angus MacKay combines a crofting life in the Western Isles with a career in Gaelic broadcasting and his activities as a photographer. 

In the past he has used wild and domesticated animals as subject matter, making reference to local history and folklore. He manages to produce work that is not nostalgic or sentimental.

In his recent exhibition ‘Indigenous’ at An Lanntair in Stornoway, much of his new work provides a fascinating insight into the generations of his own family as well as the crofting communities from where he was brought up.

https://www.instagram.com/calumangusmackay/

https://www.facebook.com/calumangus.mackay/

‘Pentland Guardian’ is probably the best piece of conceptual art that I’ve seen since moving to the Isle of Lewis. A statement I’m happy to stand by, but find difficult to justify. It shouldn’t be, it’s a photograph of a man wearing a cardigan with a bucket on his head covered with sheep’s wool, what’s not to like, I love it.

For me conceptual art is the most powerful form of visual art, it draws me in, it asks questions which rarely have answers, there’s a need to find out more and delve deeper,  I guess my logical mind needs answers so the artwork sends me on a journey and researching Danielle Macleod and her ‘Guardians’ didn’t disappoint.

Danielle Macleod

The Guardians is a series of 5 performance photographs created by Danielle Macleod for her ‘Guardians’ series, it was born from anti-religion and the artists need to understand her own spirituality.

The Pentland Guardian captures her own personal journey to seek and reconnect with the wildness in a new way. It reminds us of the experiences that continually unveil themselves around us if we’re not afraid to step into the wild.

“Creating the Pentland Guardian was an exploration of being playful and embracing risk taking. The journey of creating this image has informed the rest of my practice.” 

Danielle Macleod is a mask maker and photographer based in the Isle of Lewis in Scotland. Her photography draws on traditional Hebridean culture, local stories and her upbringing on a windswept and untamed island on the edge of the Atlantic Ocean.

After graduating from Glasgow School of Art in 2020, Danielle returned to her home island and began her current practice of creating wearable sculptures from foraged and discovered natural materials. These masks and costumes are photographed and become personifications of the outer and inner wild. The models bring to life creatures that exist in an otherworld, demonstrating connection to one’s culture, tradition and place. Through working with found materials and shooting outdoors, Danielle has continued to deepen her spiritual relationship to this environment.

The folklore of the Hebrides has a rich oral tradition which generates stories that grow and change over time. Danielle’s images interpret this folklore in an alternative way that pays homage to these traditions in a visual format, and these stories she draws upon can continue to be reimagined as time moves on. 

Education

Communication Design, Glasgow School of Art BA (Hons), 2016–2020 

Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions • Legacy: Group Show for FLOW Photofest, Highland Print Studio, Inverness 2021 • RSA Annual Exhibition, Royal Scottish Academy of Art & Architecture, Edinburgh, 2022 • Street Level Open, Street Level Photoworks, Glasgow, 2022 • Na Boireannaich, by Danielle Macleod & Alice Macmillan, An Lanntair, 2022.

Solo Exhibitions • Guardians by Danielle Macleod, Island Darkroom, 2021 • Guardians by Danielle Macleod, McCallum Art House, Fort WIlliam, FLOW PHOTOFEST, 2021

Awards

The Scottish Artists’ Benevolent Association Award, 196th Royal Scottish Academy Annual Exhibition

https://www.daniellemacleodphoto.com/

Andy collaborated with Giles Perring in the touring exhibition ‘Exposure’, and although not island based (he lives and works in London), the works he produced for ‘Exposure’ were all conceived during his time in residency on the Isle of Jura. His work ‘Into the Light’ from his Blue Jura series was gifted to the collection after the show at Baile na Cille church in 2021.

Andy Metcalf

Andy’s paintings for ‘Exposure’ fell into three series. BLUE JURA comprises work made in London about the island. SOUNDS OFF is evoked by hearing the sounds from the World Organ playing as Giles worked on his emerging soundscape and WANDERERS originated in the first long residency on the island.

Andy Metcalf is a painter and film maker, known for his bold painting, installation work, and innovative film making, as well as his work for the BBC and for Channel 4. His pioneering TV work, is typified by ‘Welcome to the Spiv Economy’ [which Giles scored with Guy Evans], which was a centre piece of the London Barbican’s 2018 film season ‘The Television Will Be Revolutionised’

‘Exposure’ has one central collaboration between himself and Giles working together on the suite of six short films, made on Jura over 18 months. The dialogue about ‘Exposure’ – with other collaborators – had often been about the implacable ‘brute’ force of the landscape/weather of Jura and how that impacts on us as ‘vulnerable’ human beings. One result of this dialogue is that he have made one series of paintings , ‘Sounds Off’, which are a response to Giles’s World Organ, made as he worked in the studio on Jura, wrapped up in this soundscape.

https://www.andymetcalf.co.uk

https://www.instagram.com/andymetcalf.artist/

I visited Màiri’s studio when she was living in High Borve on the north west coast of Lewis, she gave me a tour of her studio and I could see straight away how enthusiastic she was about her practice. I later invited her to create work for a show at Baile na Cille church in 2021 called ‘Plastic’ where I invited several island artists to respond to the issue of plastic within our environment. Màiri focused on a positive benefit of the material, using up-cycled animal feed tubs in her installation ‘Plastaig’ to hint at the ways crofters have always recycled and reused the materials to hand.

Màiri NicGillìosa

Màiri is a Gaelic visual artist. In her arts practice Gàidhlig forms a key part of the aperture through which she experiences the world. She is interested in the overlapping layers through time of peoples, language, material cultures, relationships with the environment and how these connect and relate to one another.

"My creative practice is research-led and informed by these multi-faceted relationships as I seek to create a ‘sense of place’. I draw on wide-ranging research practices including oral interaction with present-day tradition bearers.

I enjoy the physicality of working with materials to create new pathways of meaning.  This may play out in ‘live’ textural casting off of Lewisian Gneiss, or painting with spring water from Tobar Brìghde’s healing well. I have explored patinating work with peat ash carbon pigmentation using lead off the neighbour’s roof smelted into sugar kelp… I seek to present work that becomes something new in the present, imbued with the past."

Màiri studied Sculpture at Edinburgh Collage of Art, Horticulture at SRUC and has a postgraduate Masters degree in 'Learning and Teaching Gaelic Arts' with the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

https://www.mairigillies.com/

https://www.instagram.com/mairi_nicgilliosa/

https://www.reothart.scot/

In 2021 I had the pleasure of co-curating a touring exhibition with Kirsty Law called ‘Exposure’ at Baile na Cille church in Uig. A collaboration between musician, sound artist and photographer Giles Perring and filmmaker and painter Andy Metcalf, with work carried out, principally, on the Isle of Jura. Kirsty had seen one of Hulabhaig’s earlier curated shows at the church and had immediately contacted me asking to bring her touring show to Uig. An opportunity I couldn’t miss. And in return Giles gifted me one of his approval prints (Pelt), which I’m now proud to include in the collection.

Giles Perring

Giles Perring is a musician, composer, educator and cross media artist. He is founder member of the sonic sculpture collective Echo City. 

Their pioneering work in the creation of giant outdoor musical instruments and participatory music making, via their sonic playgrounds, saw them traverse play, performance, community and inclusive arts, installation art and recording over a career that began in Bethnal Green London, in 1983.



As well as his work in Echo City, Giles has worked in sound and multimedia installations with collaborators like Susie Honeyman, John Cayley and Melanie Pappenheim. Giles and Susie installed the sound work ‘Marsh Music’ in their joint show with Jock MacFadyen, Iain Sinclair and Anthony Gormley at London’s Wapping Project, which they followed up with a Jerwood Commission for music to accompany ‘Black Flag’, an exhibition of monolithic images by photographer Annabel Elgar at the Wapping Project. With the digital text artist John Cayley and the singer Melanie Pappenheim, he has created various works for installation in the UK, Brazil, US and Germanys and online.



His composition credits include commissions for Salisbury Festival Chorus and La Folea, Covent Garden Festival, and in 2011, The Tall Ships Race. He composed a very successful portfolio of music for the Extreme Music Library which located his work in TV shows like ‘Sex and The City’ and ‘Lost’.

As a performer, he has worked with performers and groups as diverse as industrial music’s enfant terrible Fad Gadget/Frank Tovey, the electronica duo Unmen, which he founded with Nick Cash, award winning contemporary choir The Shout, and free jazz titan Alan Wilkinson.

http://exchangeart.co.uk/

https://www.instagram.com/gilesperring/

I first saw Deljeem’s work when he exhibited ‘Cearns’ at the Island Darkroom here in my home village of Achmore, immediately I was impressed as I was seeing a different side of ‘urban’ island life, rarely explored by artists on these islands. The Image of ‘John Ross’ stood out for me and I felt compelled to include it in the collection.

Collecting art is such a personal thing and it seems artworks can sometimes choose you. The very next day I visited our local industrial suppliers in Stornoway and parked next to a familiar Morris Minor. A chance meeting inside the shop and an opportunity to say hello to Donald, one of Deljeem’s other ‘Cearns’ subjects would add another work to the collection. 

Deljeem Rai

The Cearns, is a project where Deljeem has been exploring the complexities not only of community life but also of his own identity. Growing up in Nepal and moving to Scotland as a teenager he has experienced the push and pull of a dual identity and this project has allowed him to explore his place here in Scotland, within an island community that has welcomed his family.

“My place here feels solid because at the end of the day I am a Cearnie.”

Deljeem Rai, originally from Nepal is currently studying photography at the City of Glasgow College. His work has gained significant recognition, including the British Journal of Photography Portrait of Britain Award in 2023 and 2024, and a finalist position in the Scottish Portrait Awards in 2023. His images have been exhibited across Scotland in notable galleries such as the Scottish Art Club in Edinburgh, Kirkcudbright Gallery in Dumfries and Galloway, and The Glasgow Art Club.

https://www.instagram.com/deljeem_rai/

Andrew Eaton Lewis

Angelica*

Beka Globe

Bog Cotton*

Beka Globe

Campion*

Beka Globe

Campion 2*

Beka Globe

Clover

Beka Globe

Daisy*

Beka Globe

Dandilion*

Beka Globe

Dandilion 2*

Beka Globe

Flag Iris*

Beka Globe

Harebell*

Beka Globe

Orchid*

Beka Globe

Waterlily*

Beka Globe

Geo

Nickolai Globe

A Road Less Travelled

Sarah Bold

In the Quiet

Andy Metcalf

Tir-chumadh ('Land-relief')

Màiri NicGillÌosa

Aiteal ('Transient view')

Sandra Kennedy

Bail àrd Bhuirgh ('High Borve')

Màiri NicGillÌosa

Pentland Guardian

Danielle Macleod

New Guardian

Danielle Macleod

Armoured Guardian

Danielle Macleod

Wandering Guardian

Danielle Macleod

Light Guardian

Danielle Macleod

Donald

Deljeem Rai

John Ross

Deljeem Rai

Still Life with Dogfish

Calum Angus Mackay

Nailed Skate

Calum Angus Mackay

Frozen Bait

Calum Angus Mackay

Conger Eel

Calum Angus Mackay

Mar gum biodh an teine air do chraiceann (As if the fire were on your skin)

Fraser MacBeath

Tiugainn Dachaidh.

Fraser MacBeath

Pelt

Giles Perring

The Darkest Dawn

Mhairi Law

The Darkest Dawn

Mhairi Law

The Darkest Dawn

Mhairi Law

The Darkest Dawn

Mhairi Law

The Darkest Dawn

Mhairi Law

Re-Soundings*

Mhairi Killin