Hame the exhibition, is open.

 After setting up throughout the week, we had the official launch of the Hame exhibition at Strathnaver Museum on Friday night. It was a lovely night and so good to tell and share these stories in and around where they began.

Here are some photos from the opening...

Me being expressive, again...

Fiona and Fiona from the Museum who facilitated the exhibition and does a grand job of promoting the history of the area.

Chatting about the dyeing of threads with Laura.

Lots of support from friends, including Brian!

And here are some of the works on display. 

The main piece is All That was Lost - representing the story of the seven families of Achanlochy who were cleared forcefully, in 1819. I have imagined an inventory of their household items and all that they had; and what remains in the rusty tin is all they could take - a few pieces of this and that which could be grabbed as they fled.

The second piece about the Strathnaver Clearances is Bundled and Burnt. I wrote about it here.  It is now displayed, suspended in a perspex frame, with scattered charred remains below. Quiet, small, powerful.

Two pieces, inspired by the Clearances around the Strath of Kildonan near Helmsdale, are based on the statue The Emigrants. 

The Emigrants is now displayed open, with all fourteen postcards available for viewing and protected under a perspex cover. I have posted about it previously here.

The second piece called Roll The Dice is also displayed under a perspex cover, on a black perspex based. I am not sure I ever fully blogged about this piece; but it tells the story of the family in the Emgirants statue who took a very long nd dangerous sea voyage to Canada, and the hardship of arriving there in deep deep winter, after many turns of bad luck.

The final pairing in the exhibition is about moving between two homes - perhaps where we are born; and where we live. Perhaps for students gone away to study. Perhaps like me in two different countries. Perhaps for children moving between two parents...personal and universal.

Travelling Home has threads wrapped around pegs. The left hand ones were solar dyed from the garden and roadside here in Scotland; whilst the threads on the right were dyed using the garden and kitchen in Maleny. They are wrapped around pegs which for me, symbolise the movement between places. The Summer Walkers and Travellers, often moved between villages and towns and would whittle birch pegs, wrapped with tin, and sell them from door to door. The threads are all about the connections between two homes, two places of the heart.

And Postcards Home also uses threads from two homes and the idea of postcards being sent between two places...

And finally, here is the happy, thrilled, and tired artist...

It is a marvellous thing to have the exhibition open and ready for sharing. Such a lot of work, but oh so worth it.