An exhibition by Skye-based artist Caroline Dear will be on display at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig this February – April 2012. The exhibition shows our subtle relationship with the living landscape through 100 individual ropes made nearly every day over a 6 month period, from different plant materials.

 The exhibition will be open from 11 February – 16 April 2012, Monday – Saturday 9am – 10pm.

This exhibition by Caroline Dear includes 100 ropes made from 50 different plants from the island of Skye. Traditionally, handmade ropes were used for practical purposes such as thatching roofs but Caroline takes the tradition to new realms of creativity.

Some of the chosen materials are those that were traditionally used for making ropes by hand. Other plants, such as dandelion stems and fern fronds, were chosen to experiment with. The ropes were made nearly every day between 1st February and the 21st June 2011, with their progress logged on a blog http://carolinedear.blogspot.com/. The criteria for choosing specific plants were they it needed to be abundant, the stems could be made into rope without drying or soaking and they needed no preparation.

Caroline Dear says of her work, ‘The specific way in which fragile single plant stems can be entwined to make strong rope can be seen as a metaphor for the universal aspects of our lives. The narrative of our individual lives is a series of linked entwinings, with each other, with the land around us, with past knowledge and with place. These are ordinary plants, of seemingly little significance, yet they form an intricate and indispensable part of the ecology of a particular place. At present, throughout the world, one in five plants are threatened with extinction. These ropes are a fresh thread to link us anew with specific plants and a particular landscape. Our lives are a network of threads, binding, tying and connecting our many individual paths. These ropes are not to fasten the thatch, tether the cow or snare the bird, their function is to connect, link and entwine us to the living world around us.’

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig
Slèite
An t-Eilean Sgitheanach
IV44 8RQ
+44 (0) 1471 888000

Source: Sabhal Mòr Ostaig