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Email PageStories, paper, stone…PETER URPETH gives an update on Stornoway's Sail Loft Project |
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| The walls have been stripped. What wasn’t saved is now lost. The wallpapers are soaking in a bath in Moira Macaulay’s studio in Grimshader. Pirate turns surgeon as slowly their grimy layers separate - seven narcissistic layers - faint florals, pompous, manly wood-effects, exotic Chinoisary - the artist peels them apart with a fish slice and drapes the sodden specimens to dry on last week’s Gazette. |
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The bath water looks toxic, paste and nicotine setting like aspic. As they soak so their future is debated – how can they be preserved and shown? A firm in England specialises in certain treatments. Better do it locally, get the knowledge yourself.
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Meanwhile, stories are being told. The poet, Ian Stephen, tours with a microphone gathering oral histories of the building and its people, finds one who was born in the place, bathed as a child in a tin bath by its fire, remembers the family sharing few rooms, mum and dad sleeping in the kitchen.
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A war time map spread on a kitchen table, a diet of salt and bad things on which everyone thrived. Raw materials indeed - stories, paper, stone, and as the materials are gathered so the piece will be built, a little at a time. Two boats to be renovated, sail past the opening of the exhibition, pipers playing on board. Old sail cloth to send to Finland, it’s all taking shape. © Peter Urpeth, 2005
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Associated PagesSail Loft Project audio clips |
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