| Project Title | scribbles, fragments . . . voices of connection and belonging |
| Location | Scottish Highlands, UK |
| Date | 1 – 15 November 2025 |
Artist’s Statement
I use landscape as material. Moving through landscape I make drawings with the movement of my body: my work in dialogue with a sense of place.
Intuitive.
Responsive.
Found moments, objects and images emerge into installations through photography, film, sound and performative experience, frequently temporary and ephemeral.
I love to challenge and make connections with others through the work, drawing attention to the overlooked, the ordinary, the extraordinary and the thought provoking, enjoying the tension of paradox, juxtaposition, randomness and chance. My ethical values shape my choices of materials, processes and interactions: making sense of my world, finding my place, my space, making meaning. I seek to draw others in.
I live in Strathcarron, the Kyle of Sutherland in the Highlands of Scotland, my current place of belonging.
Contextual Statement
This project grew from a love of landscape and a passion for community and connection. The work explores a sense of place and belonging through walking and talking together, focussing on the potential for friendship to be radical and subversive, challenging increasing political polarisation, a sense of political alienation and feelings of disempowerment by
reframing through dialogical art practice. The wider socioeconomic context of potentially fragmenting rural development issues, including demographic change and the exodus of young people; economic change such as the rise of green energy infrastructure; environmental pressures including the impacts of climate change on for, example, salmon numbers; and over-tourism, underpinned the research.
The project comprised a series of walks, including solo walks, of varying lengths and duration that provided the context to explore drawing as my own and other bodies moved through the landscape. I explored through the lens of two communities with which I have connections – my local Kyle of Sutherland community and the Highland Buddhist Group – engaging in six conversations held whilst walking with individuals, during which we created drawings together. The objective here was to facilitate in-depth conversations with a diversity of participants, and the six individuals were invited to choose locations meaningful to them to facilitate agency, ownership and trust in the collaborative process.
I held two group walking events, one for each of the two communities, that were designed to draw in a wider number of participants and these included solo experiences, group drawing and group conversations, all to create opportunities for new perspectives on the participants’ experience of a familiar place and space.
The work was shown in two carefully selected spaces. The Old Icehouse on the shores of the Kyle of Sutherland, a fabulous building, strategically located right by the river that has connections to the salmon netting/fishing industry of the Kyle. It was used for processing the salmon before distribution. Since the end of that era in the ’90’s the building has been left with all its treasures in place, a time capsule! The original labels for sending the salmon off to Aberdeen were scattered about; the old waders and the weighing machine left as found, as were many other items. My second exhibition was held in the Highland Buddhist Centre, Inverness, a very different space with symbolic significance for the community of participants. The exhibitions were space -responsive, honouring the contexts and participant communities, the audience invited into the intimacy of the conversations through a sound piece playing into the space and the ephemeral nature of the drawings and three-dimensional pieces.
Project Documentation
Sound piece extract 4 mins:
https://falmouth.cloud.panopto.eu/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=db7b348b-7202-41ec-accb-b39c00a09ccb
The Old Icehouse Exhibition
The Buddhist Centre Exhibition
ArtWalks
My thanks to the Kyle of Sutherland Fisheries Trust, the ‘Gym Ladies’, Triratna Highland Buddhist Community, the fantastic tutors and peers at Falmouth University, all family and friends that have supported me so generously.
Contact: https://saddhavati.org.uk/