PAST EXHIBITION: This was part of the EAF21 programme.

Owners of the Soil was an exhibition of work by Will Maclean and Shaun Fraser, examining ties between land, identity and ownership through the early Scottish diaspora’s dual identity of colonised and coloniser.

Maclean’s boxed constructions, collages and drawings recount the experiences of six residents of Polbain, Ross-shire. Each one, a native Gaelic speaker, was born in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and it was an accepted part of their lives that they would have to leave their homes to find a living in the south or overseas.

Fraser’s works in glass, bronze and print focus on Nova Scotia, an area dominated by Scottish settlements with place names that displaced First Nation Mi’kmaq titles. Incorporating peat and organic matter, Fraser’s work holds an innate link to the locality upon which it draws.