Artists in Residence
We welcome creative practitioners from all artforms to spend time at the Grinneabhat Residency.
Our programme is designed to work in partnership with the local crofting community, offering the opportunity to experience a biodiverse and culturally rich place first hand.
For more information on availability or to sign up to our Residency Newsletter contact:
Ripple/Kare
Beti Bricelj, Leon Patchett & Kimmo Ylönen
Beti Bricelj (Slovenia)
Kimmo Ylönen (Finland)
Leon Patchett (UK)
Ripple/Kare is a project creating contemporary visual art about and ultimately from water.
The original core group - Caroline Dear (UK), Heli Konttinen (FI), Leon Patchett (UK) and Kimmo Ylönen (FI) was formed in 2016 after they finished a project using the common reed as a material for developing work for exhibition.
Since then, the group has gathered at residences to discuss, plan and experiment with different methods to tackle a subject of a truly global scale. In September 2017 Ripple/Kare stayed in the village of Norup, Assens, Denmark. In June 2017 the group visited Saari-residence, Mynämäki, Finland. In August 2018 the Finnish half of the group visited Stockholm, Sweden.
The subject of an individual work of art can be anything from pure aesthetics of water to searching for the origin of water in the universe. To this day artists in the group have mainly been working with their own medium of choice. Depending on venue or the event the group may also build a collaborative piece or host a workshop.
Whatever work the artists produce there will always be a strong emphasis on encouraging the public to pay close attention to the value of water. Artists’ approaches to the subject can be incredible varied, a work of art can even take direct action to solve a specific water related problem. For example, Ripple/Kare carried out an AQUATTACK in the Saari Residence to clear a pond with microbe bombs.
Ripple/Kare is looking forward to building an international network of artists and searching for venues and events to attend. Composition of the group arriving to the Isles of Lewis and Harris is Beti Bricelj (SLO), Leon Patchett (UK) and Kimmo Ylönen (FI).
The residency has been developed in partnership with An Lanntair.
Work has been supported by: Kone Foundation; Finnish Cultural Foundation Art Promotion Centre Finland; Swedish-Finnish Cultural Foundation; Visual Artist and Craft Maker Award, Creative Scotland.
Click on the images above for more information about the artists.
Carol Mannas: Print Artist
Carol Mannas is a Canadian print artist who spent a month as resident artist at Grinneabhat.
“What I can fully appreciate after a month is the sense of calm, rugged beauty and permanence that are present here. The vastness of the Atlantic Ocean along the west and north of the Isle of Lewis is inspiring to me – the weather it brings from other parts of the world and the potential dramatic systems it can carry to this ancient coastline. Rock cliffs, in all their magnificence, appear as a protective wall – buffering the sea and keeping it at bay so that the citizens of this Isle have the land to live on and cultivate to provide for themselves.”
Read more about Carol’s time at Grinneabhat here.
Mhairi Killin
Mhairi Killin lives on the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland, where she works with the precious relationships between land, sea, humans, and other living beings. Her practice explores the island landscapes that surround and are her home, and she seeks to understand how belief structures – religious mythopoeic, and socio-political – have shaped the physical and metaphysical spaces she journeys through.
Her most recent project, On Sonorous Seas, 2022, is a multi-disciplinary, collaborative project which began in 2018 when a whale carcass washed ashore on the Isle of Iona, and at Bragar. Finding out why the whales had died led the artist on a journey into the tangled overlay of two cryptic environments: the habitats of the military and the habitats of deep diving whales. It took her on a ten-day sea voyage aboard the Hebridean Whale & Dolphin Trust research vessel, The Silurian, during the largest tactically focussed, NATO-led, military exercise in Europe - Joint Warrior - and immersed her in a pelagic world of sound.
What became of the Iona and Bragar whales is a story told with the voices of science, art, music and poetry. It interrogates the
power of, and reliance on, sound as a survival tool for both the whales and the military, and the complex relationship between the militarisation of Scotland’s seas and their existing ecosystems.
Mhairi Killin was at Grinneabhat for a week long residency in August 2023, bringing the Bragar Cuvier’s Beaked Whale skull home to hold a series of “conversations through a whale”, and to learn more about Bragar’s long relationship with whales. Mhairi was last in Bragar 5 years ago working with stories of the conch call to prayer and the absence of the bell in the post Reformation soundscapes of Lewis and Iona.
As part of her residency Mhairi hosted a talk about On Sonorous Seas, and what it means, for her, to be an artist with an island as a context. During the residency, the studio was open to visitors, and on the final evening an informal event was held to allow Mhairi to share the work carried out during the residency.
On Sonorous Seas became a living project through the support of: Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, An Tobar and Mull Theatre, Creative Scotland, CHArts, The Space CIC, Scottish Association for Marine Science, and National Museum of Scotland.
Ruta Vitkauskaite
Our first resident artist at Grinneabhat was Glasgow based Lithuanian composer and researcher Ruta Vitkauskaite.
Ruta’s work spans from ensemble and orchestral, to collaborative opera in the dark, to experimental projects for one listener. Her interest in community projects resulted in Walking Opera and currently she is running CoMA – Contemporary Music for All, Glasgow branch. She has recently received a PhD in Composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
During her two week residency, run by An Lanntair, Ruta worked collaboratively with Shawbost-based musicians and composers James and Katie Mackenzie. James is a graduate of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland's Piping Degree Course. In 2019, he won the Silver Medal for Piobaireachd at the Northern Meeting Piping Competition. A former member of folk band ‘Breabach’, James is also a member of ‘Tryst’. He has produced three solo albums. His latest album ‘Fìbhig’ was released in December.
Katie is a Gaelic singer and harpist. She studied at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, specialising in Gaelic Song with Kenna Campbell. Katie has released one album to date, The Lassies Reply, which was nominated for Album of the Year at the Scots Trad Awards.
Click below to read Ruta's 'My Time in Bragar'
More information on Ruta's work can be found at rutavitkauskaite.weebly.com
Alex Hackett, pink egg