A birthday treat turned into a useful opportunity to extend my practice and find new sources of inspiration. In May 2025 I set sail on a cruise entitled British Isles and European Delights. An unusual itinerary leaving and returning to Liverpool sailing anticlockwise around Great Britain calling at St Peter Port in Guernsey, Honfleur in France, Ijmuiden for Amsterdam, then …
As part of my ongoing work around the Discovery Expedition of 1924-27 I have been thinking a lot about krill. The Expedition was investigation the sustainability of the South Atlantic whale fishery (spoiler: it wasn’t sustainable) by looking at the whole ecology of the whale food chain/environment. It was groundbreaking research for lots of reasons, but the importance of the …
The main aim of the Discovery Oceanographic Expedition (1924-27) was to investigate the sustainability of the South Atlantic Whale Fishery. As part of this there needed to be an understanding of the marine ecosystem that sustained the whales. It was known that krill (mostly Antarctic Krill Euphausia superba) were the main food source for these whales but it was not …
A question I am often asked about my textile work is “How long did that take to make?”. A common answer (depending on the piece) is “between a fortnight and ten years”. The work I was commissioned to make by the Scottish Maritime Museum (SMM) and their exhibition All Mortal Greatness is But Disease is a good example of that. …
This work was made for the 2022 exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. Whaling in the unpredictable weather of the Arctic could be dangerous. Storms would drive ice against and underneath whale ships. If the hull of a ship was damaged one way to repair it was to haul the …
This work was made for the 2022 exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. Early whaling was mostly in the Greenland Fisheries, an area around Spitsbergen. Overhunting led to population decline and new whale populations in Baffin Bay and beyond were exploited until those were also depleted. Approx 25 x 20 …
This work was made for the 2022 exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. Arctic Whaling was supported and encouraged by a government subsidy known as a bounty. In return for fulfilling a number of requirements the basic cost of a voyage would be covered. The amount of bounty changed over …
This work was made for the 2022 exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. Early Scottish Arctic Whaling took place around Spitsbergen, an island between Norway and The North Pole. As there was a mistaken belief that Spitsbergen was linked to Greenland this was known as the Greenland Fishery whalemen referred …
This work was made for the 2022 exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling at the Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife. As the whale populations declined around Spitsbergen Scottish whalers sailed around the southern tip of Greenland up the Davis Strait between Greenland and Canada to Baffin Bay and further north in search of whales. In 1830 a …
The Scottish Fisheries Museum in Anstruther, Fife, is a delightful labyrinth of a place, located in a range of harbourfront buildings. Spending a long ‘Meet the Artist’ Weekend after the opening of my exhibition Arctic Ventures: forgotten stories of Scottish Whaling the most common comment from visitors arriving at the Whaling Gallery where the exhibition was, was ‘It’s much bigger …