INSTAGRAM TAKEOVER – Royal Society of Sculptors

Join me on Instagram for my takeover of the Royal Society of Sculptors’ feed, running from 16–18 June.

The takeover follows my month-long residency on Eilean Shona, an extraordinary Hebridean island, and traces my creative journey.

Across ten posts I’m exploring ideas of nature as both sculpture and sculptor, and asking what it might mean to collaborate with nature rather than simply be inspired by it.

As it turns out, this collaboration emerges through sound, movement, light, shadow and gesture.

Along the way, I’ll be attempting to answer both sensible and less sensible questions:

• Can I compete with the sculptural forms that nature creates?

• Can I summon a creature from the loch?

• What does moss sound like?

• Can I make a musical instrument from bra elastic and wind?

• Or from oyster shells and a waterfall?

It’s my first major residency and also my first Instagram takeover, making it an opportunity to reflect not only on the work itself but also on how creative processes can be shared.

I’d be delighted if you joined me on the Royal Society of Sculptors Instagram account, and as always, I’d love to hear your thoughts and responses to the work.

POST ONE: HIDE | REVEAL

For the next 29 days, Red Cottage on Eilean Shona is home.

I arrive with an ambitious intention: to discover what it might mean to collaborate with nature.

Not simply to be inspired by a place, but to allow it to shape the work alongside me. To become, in some sense, a co-author.

So begins four weeks of immersion in the natural world. Touching, listening, observing. Learning the rhythms of an island through all the senses.

My starting theme is Hide | Reveal.

Everywhere I look, the island performs this cycle. Tides expose and conceal the mudflats. Weather shifts by the minute. Peaks and neighbouring islands emerge from mist, only to disappear again. Through the cottage windows, the loch is never the same twice.

Hidden worlds reveal themselves in bark and stone, in the intricate communities of moss, lichen and fungi that thrive throughout the Celtic rainforest and pinetum. Even beneath the waterline, seaweed sways in breath-like rhythms.

The landscape is rich with sculptural forms. It raises an uncomfortable question: how can I possibly compete with the sculpture of the natural world?

The story of Eilean Shona doesn’t arrive fully formed. It emerges slowly through sound, light, shadow, movement and gesture.

Am I being fanciful to think this is a joint endeavour between the island and me?

Over the next few days, I’ll share this creative journey. And you can decide.