The Project Eigg residency period is over. I am back in Glasgow having had a hectic week or so of wrapping things up on the island, and now I am examining almost a thousand images of documentation and new work. I will now spend a couple of months composing the audio walking guide and the website that will house it. I would very much like to show images of the mumming play by the children of Eigg, but I am still waiting for permissions at this time. As soon as I have them, I will post them up.
Last week was a miserably rainy period, but having had my photographer back only since the 22nd of August, I still had to arrange the photographs of myself in the landscape searching for the horn-less ram “Macbeth”. It was interesting that the search quickly took on the feeling of a cumulative process. Where the series of events each contributed something to the artefact I carried; a large pair of horns from a dead ram. I found myself being influenced by the landscape, the rocks, trees and lochan. I had to reinvigorate these relics of potency both with life and masculine vitality. The ever prominent Ann Sgurr the “jetty”, the “saw-tooth”, the “notch” that perhaps gives Eigg its Gaelic name; seemed like the most natural, immense, and potent presence on the island. Having photographed in the pouring rain, and waded knee deep in boggy marshes we decided that the images were being ruined by droplets on the lens and so I focused on applying the stickers I had made for the swap shop.
The icons came out extremely well as vinyl stickers, and I was able to secrete over a thousand of them onto the items in such a way that they would not be immediately visible, and would not get in the way of the normal running of the swap shop. I hope to see some of the objects over the years to come, perhaps in a thrift shop in Europe.
