Tales From The Museum (8th September

Tales from the Museum is an exhibition of new work by four contemporary artist/makers made in response to Gaelic culture, material histories and abandoned settlements on the Isle of Mull, developed through a series of artists residencies at An Tobar over the last year.

Eleanor MacDougall, Andrea Sayers, Tabitha Kyoko Moses and Sally Pattrick spent time with the collections and curators of Mull Museum and The Ross of Mull Historical Centre and at the sites of clearance villages to research

Each artist has created work that in some way seeks to re-inhabit these places, histories and cultures with objects of remembrance or embedded narrative. The artworks created cross boundaries between art and craft, including silversmithing, embroidery, drawing, installation and photography. Gallery One presents these new artworks as museum artifacts on plinths and under glass – as precious objects.

The exhibition also brings together an archive of the project research, including oral histories, Gaelic story and song and documentation of artifacts and sites.

This project showcases a diverse range of contemporary practice that seeks to address themes that will resonate with individuals and communities across the highlands and islands of Scotland.

Saturday 8th September - 31st October 2007, Galleries One & Two, Admission Free

About the Artists

Eleanor MacDougall grew up in Lochaber. She studied Silversmithing at Glasgow School of Art, and set up her workshop near Fionnphort, Mull in 1985; as a child, she had spent holidays there at her grandmother’s home. She produces jewellery and sculptural pieces, and specializes in the production of hand-raised bowls and tumbler cups. She is currently reading for an MA in 'Material Culture and the Environment' (Cultar Dùthchasach agus an Àrainneachd) at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig in Skye. Her interests include Gaelic language and culture, history and oral tradition; she has been involved in projects at the Ross of Mull History Centre, and teaches Gaelic part time.

Andrea Sayers grew up in Dundee, spending holidays at the family home in Stornoway. From this grew a love of the Gaelic language and culture which has influenced her work greatly over the years. She studied a Masters of Fine Art degree at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, and has recently been accepted to study a practice-based PhD investigating domestic memory and folklore within Gaelic culture. Andrea has lived between Mull and Dundee since 2000, and is currently working with the Ross of Mull Historical Centre, researching oral history and the landscape, while curating the new museum space in Bunessan.

Tabitha was born in Liverpool and spent her 1970s childhood making things - dolls’ clothes, birthday cards, Christmas presents. An interest in sewing and fashion led to Loughborough College of Art and Design where she studied Multi-Media Textiles. The next seven years were spent working in costume design for film and television productions where an eye for detail was finely honed. A growing urge to return to making things led her to MA Textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University in 2001.

Tabitha is an artist who explores objects and clothing as carriers of identity, memory and loss, responding to and revealing the histories of people, spaces and places. She makes tokens of remembrance from stained and worn fabrics found in junk shops and flea markets. Potent materials such as human hair and bone are finely worked in order to seduce the viewer while exposing an underlying darkness or melancholia.

Her practice takes many forms including intervention, installation and live art. She frequently engages a mixed (art and non-art) audience who encounter her objects in museums, country houses and gardens as well as conventional gallery spaces. Tabitha has made and shown work nationally and internationally, from Poland to Pakistan, but has never before exhibited in Scotland.

Sally Pattrick was born in Manchester and grew up in Buxton, Derbyshire. She studied Jewellery and Silversmithing at Edinburgh College of Art, and now produces sculptural pieces in a range of media. Her work is inspired by the museum environment and collections of objects, and she exhibited in the Fife Contemporary Art & Craft project ‘Past Present’, which involved working with East Fife Museum Service. She spent a month in residence at An Tobar last summer researching for the Tales from the Museum project.