Exhibiting Artists: Shauna McMullan

Shauna McMullan considers time and landscape. SITTING is an ongoing series of actions created for and in response to specific locations on the edges of Europe; places with complicated historical, geographic and political landscape identities.

The first SITTING took place in Agios Sozomenos, Cyprus, next to the UN controlled Green Line separating the south and north of the island. The second was in Telavag, on the edge of the west coast of Norway; a village deleted from maps during World War II by German occupation forces.  On 31^stJanuary 2020, coinciding with the Practising Landscape Exhibition in the Lighthouse, she marked what was Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s last day in the European Union, by sitting on the Scottish / English border at Scots’ Dike.

The deserted village of Agios Sozomenos is 30km east of Nicosia in Cyprus.  Until 1964, the village was mixed, inhabited by Greek and Turkish Cypriots, but the last residents fled during the 1974 conflict and were displaced to nearby villages.  The UN controlled Green Line, which divides the north and south of the island, runs along the side of the village and a UN look out post situated on this line was McMullan’s point of focus throughout.

Telavag is a fishing village situated on the very west coast of Norway. The village was deleted from maps during World War II by German occupation forces and subsequently rebuilt by surviving families who returned following the end of the war. Looking west is the North Sea and Shetland, to the east is Bergen, central Norway and Sweden.  The small hill from where villagers were taken, on 30^thApril 1942, to watch the burning of their homes was McMullan’s point of focus throughout.

On 31^stJanuary McMullan marked what was Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland’s last day in the European Union, by sitting on the Scottish / English border at Scots’ Dike.  Scots’ Dike is a three and a half mile long, low, interrupted earth ditch, constructed by the Scots and English in 1552 to mark the division of the Debatable Lands and to define a section of the border between Scotland and England. It is currently under mixed land-use.