Compelled by Memory: The Lewis Land Monuments 1994 - 2019

To accompany the exhibition catalogue, Art First has produced a book about five award-winning Lewis Land Monuments of extraordinary power and beauty. All overseen by Will Maclean, An Sùileachan and the Iolaire memorial, both recently completed commissions, were co-designed with Marian Leven. Bronze sculptures by Maclean and Arthur Watson play a central role in the narrative of the Iolaire and the photographer Robin Gillanders has documented the structures in their glorious landscape settings on this remote, outer Hebridean Isle. Essays by Lindsay Blair, Joni Buchanan, Duncan Macmillan and Tom Normand bring the history of the events behind the contemporary monuments to light, offering a vivid insight into memory, place and a profound sense of tribute to the courage of the ‘land heroes’ those crofters who stood up to power and defended their rights and culture over a century ago.

 

New collaboration by John Burnside and Will Maclean
A Catechism of the Laws of Storms

John Burnside’s poetry and Will Maclean’s imagery first came together in a collaborative print–poem commissioned for the opening of Dundee Contemporary Arts in 1999. A Catechism of the Laws of Storms continues the joint projects.

Some years ago Maclean found some dis-bound copies of an illustrated weekly newspaper The Pictorial World of 1882–83 and used the woodcut images to assemble a series of collages, which were then scanned and digitally altered.

The series of collages related to descriptions of storms and hurricanes from nautical books and manuals in Maclean’s collection, in particular The Law of Storms by Henry Paddington. The collages were shown to Burnside who composed a series of twelve poems in response to the images. Maclean in turn altered a number of the images in response to the poems.

Copies now available from Art First at £12.00