This project emerged as a result of a collaborative exchange between Dr Alison Price and myself, who each at the centre of our respective research practices, explore themes of place and a sense of ‘Being’. The collaborative space we inhabited was created in the Autumn of 2022, through reciprocal dialogue and acts of presence, while both of us were on-site at Loch Cill Chriosd on the Isle of Skye.

 

We each incorporated our respective modes of artistic practice (Price through her camera lens and myself through material encounters) to document our experience with this specific location. It was my first visit with this place, while Price has been working in close-proximity of the loch for over a decade. Although Price and  myself have divergent making processes, we both owe much to Nan Shepherd’s approach to ‘Being’, as described in The Living Mountain, through practices which encourage attentiveness and attenuation of conscious thought.

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From this collaboration emerged two artist books, one designed and created by Price titled Changing Seasons, and the other by myself titled at the farthest end of the loch. Present in our respective art books is the imprint of working alongside each other and the shift in perspective which occurs when one’s ‘Being’ in place is reflected to them by another.

 

These books have been exhibited together as a diptych at the 2023 DJCAD Research Expo and at a pop-up exhibition as part of the Printmaking, Artists’ Books, Landscape & Nature conference at UWE Bristol. The collaboration has also been documented in a case study in my PhD thesis and in Price’s critical research journal. Price and I are currently co-authoring an article about this research project which is planned to be submitted for publication in 2025.

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1 Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2011), 106.

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