Portal

Hugh Watt’s work aims through a practice-led research approach to explore the relationship between nature, culture and spirituality within the Scottish landscape.

Hugh Watt (The Glasgow School of Art), Martin Wildgoose (Archaeologist / AOC Archaeologist Group) 

Through inter-disciplinary enquiry with archaeologist Martin Wildgoose, Watt has been undertaking field trips to two locations on Skye, namely High Pasture Cave and Cave of the Seed. Watt is interested in how these sites, from mid bronze age, through to the Iron age, were occupied and used during the mid-bronze age and iron age, prior to its closure in 80 BC. In particular, Watt’s research has drawn on the use of these underground spaces as ceremonial spaces. For the exhibition Practicing Landscape: Land, Histories and Transformation, Watt shows new video work which explores the notion of a threshold or liminal space, within landscape that connects the physical with the spiritual. In addition, he exhibits a new piece which works with a 3D scan of, the cave’s area known as ‘Bone Passage’. Watt has experimented with having a scaled down 3D print, cast in plaster, which is about the size of a human spine. He is interested in how this print can make reference to the human body and also tree roots, trees being that which was understood to sit between the physical and the spiritual.

TOP IMAGE: Hugh Watt, Portal-Bone Passage 57° 12’ 50’’ N, 6° 0’ 40’’ W, (2019/20), (Detail)