MACKAY COUNTRY RESIDENCY JULY – SEPTEMBER 2006
Residency blog: www.ruthiemacdougall.blogspot.com
For three months I lived in a tiny community called Skerray on the North Coast of Scotland, a wild and unpredictable place.
I became fascinated by a nearby Island called Eilean Nan Ron, Island of the Seals.
The last inhabitants of Eilean Nan Ron were voluntarily evacuated in 1938 and their nine croft houses can still be clearly seen from the mainland. Whether a past resident of the island or a new comer to the area, like I was, the distance felt when looking out to the island is not only geographical but also historical and to varying degrees, sentimental. Over the three months I committed myself to developing a work that would both communicate the sentiment and culture of the area whilst opening up a new dialogue between the island and mainland, past and present.
I decided that I would row out to Eilean Nan Ron ( probably the first womam in the 21st century to do this) in doing so, it was my intention to physically map the distance between the two ports, while simultanously undertaking a test of endurance, referencing the strength and capability of the island’s women in a form of sea passage rarely used now.
I also asked the local community to sponsor the illumination of the island by lending me their lamps. The participation of the local community was all importat to the work: teaching me to row, lendng me the beautiful shetland boat that was used, documenting the event in video and photography and keeping me safe upon the water.
The following text was written for me by a member of the local community after I asked for those involved to offer a personal perspective on the project.
The Myth of Eilean Nan Ron
When we speak of myths we tend to think of the prehistoric or the fictional, the Trojan Horse, the Labours of Hercules, the Lord of the Rings. We instinctively distance ourselves, living in our everyday modern world, from myths and the process of myth making, as if the stories that we tell about the world around us were somehow different, somehow objective truth.
But every community has its myths, and every member of every community is complicit in the production, and reproduction of these myths. You could say that a community is defined by its myths, that a community is nothing more or less than the collection of people who believe a common set of stories, who reverence a certain mythology.
And we are all, for better or worse, members of various overlapping communities, geographical, cultural, political, spiritual, each with its own mythology, its stories, its truths. Because we are not speaking of myths as fictions, but as narratives and fragments of narratives, threads to be spun together to illustrate the past and sustain the present – we are the stories that we believe.
Eilean Nan Ron has such mythic status in Skerray. The island is a constant presence offshore, the one and a half miles of water a physical separation representing almost 70 years, a lifetime, since evacuation. The life of the islanders belongs now to stories rather than memories, and in that transformation has become a rich mythology, which defines the community that tells and retells those stories.
So what does it mean to make art out of this? Firstly, there has to be the recognition that the island itself has become a community artwork, a narrative in progress that grows, evolves, is embellished and edited.
Second, it could be seen as a corrective, a regrounding – see, this rowing, it wasn’t the work of giants or super humans, just a hard but routine part of the daily existence. And why did we all assume that the lamps would have been visible 70 years ago? Has our bright, shiny, electric world colonised our ancestors’ lives too?
And thirdly, and maybe most of all, this art will become a contribution to the work in progress that is the myth of Eilean Nan Ron, another thread to weave in the story of the island, the lassie who rowed to the island, the community that came together to help and watch, and be participants not just in an artwork, but in a myth.