Mairi Gillies is an artist and Gaelic woman from the Lowlands of Scotland, living and working in Lewis. Raised in Edinburgh by a scholar and a poet, her childhood was steeped in language, traditional cèilidhs and the duplicity of urban life connected to familial rural places. Formally trained in sculpture and horticulture, a Hebridean move awoke a deep curiosity around a Gaelic philosophy of aesthetics. Today, her practice takes an embedded approach to ‘place’, inviting participation with a sentient landscape. Using archive research and socially engaged enquiry, Gillies acts as a sruth-chlais (conduit) between past and present, and human and more-than human communities, viewing her work as quiet activism deeply rooted where nature, culture, and identity meet.
Dìreadh ’s a Teàrnadh (Ascending and Descending) charts a personal terrain of domestic separation, crisis, and the hard-won rooting of a new life. At its core is Points of View, a durational film compiling a year of walks captured during moments of intense pressure and flight into the hills. This sits alongside material sculptures representing a deep ‘hefting’ to a new sentient life-scape. A home-cut peat embedded with a cast lead fishing weight honours indigenous practices—ways of being, held ocean knowledge within ground energy. Suspended, a woven grass rope acts as a physical timeline. Created hand-twist over hand-gather during a single uphill walk across the croft, its nested flora—from shore seaweed to summit heather— maps time unfolding, ecological diversity and personal endurance. Mirroring traditional Gaelic praise poetry about navigating dark highland passes, the work explores the weight of untying a windknot partnership, the emotional toll of carrying children through transition, and a profound journey toward one-ness, settlement and bare peace.
Receiving the RSA Adam Bruce Award at the Student Exhibition in 2004 provided essential early validation. That supported momentum instilled the confidence to take creative risks, shaping my path toward an embedded practice rooted in community storytelling. Returning to the Academy two decades later feels like a deeply reflective, full-circle moment.
