Artist in Residence, 2006 - Sally Pattrick

This work is a response to the time I spent in residence at An Tobar in August 2006. I was investigating the material culture left behind from the lives of the people who lived on the island in the past. This was centred around artefacts in the museum, relating to traditional trades and ways of life – including quarrying, peat cutting and crofting, as well as home life. These tools and utensils have been handmade and worn through use in everyday life, and are now presented or labelled in the museum environment, distant from their functional origins. This change of roles and signiﬁcance is the starting point for my work.

My practice is informed by the language of the museum and the way objects are presented in this environment – layout and labelling. The overall composition of the piece is intended to create the feel of a collection or archive. I investigated the tools in the Mull Museum collection – both on display and in the store. I made drawings and photos of them in their original settings and explored different ways of recording their forms. I collected images of the artefacts, labels, their setting, the places associated with them, maps, and diagrams. I also looked at Gaelic songs and poetry associated with the objects and the way they were used in the past. All this research was intended to put the items investigated into a context and to give a fuller sense of them.

I experimented with linocuts during my residency as the bold quality of line reﬂected the strong forms of the objects and represented the idea of the artefacts themselves as an imprint of past ways of life. I developed these 2D images into the pierced-out three-dimensional metal drawings. The labelling incorporates the research into the objects’ backgrounds and provides a solid contrast to the skeletal metal forms. By displaying my development work, I hope to give my own work in context, just as the labelling provides background to the artefacts