Alexander and Susan Maris live on the edge of Rannoch Moor - a deforested expanse of granite, heather and peat-bog, whose primeval topography has inspired and informed their collaborative life-work for the past thirty-six years. Their forms and imagery of their photographic and woven works explore and re-activate Scots cultural histories and the signs and symbols lying dormant in our landscape.
In 2017 the Marises were commissioned by Deirdre MacKenna to direct the focus of their work towards the area historically known as Lorne; in order to meet the people of the area, Alexander Maris undertook to walk from Schiehallion to Dun-I on Iona as an artist’s research-action, offering artefacts and ideas in exchange/reciprocation for the knowledge he was offered. The artworks in this exhibition introduce the Marises further research into the native wolf of Scotland, belonging to the land in the time before humans took control.
On exhibition here are three Wolf Spoor Tapestries together with their location photographs. The tapestries have taken form in resonance with the idea that The Last Wolf, as described in the fictional narrative threaded into / through Jim Crumley's book, made its way south to the Black Wood of Rannoch, before crossing Rannoch Moor to finally expire beneath the pines of Blackmount.
Each tapestry has been made by Sue Maris from wool coloured from small handfuls of lichen gathered from the location named after its own wolf legend; the lichen is combined with water from nearby natural watercourses to infuse and dye wool from which Sue has woven the tapestries at a scale which depicts the actual proportions of the gait of a European Wolf.
Also exhibited is the first in the new series The Wolves of Lorne, informed by the constellation of clues which the artists are gradually tracing in the Gaelic-language place-names such as Luban Fèithe a' Mhadaidh (Meandering stream of the Wolf) and Mullinavadie / Muileann a’ Mhadaidh (Mill of the Wolf), to imagine the wolves’ journey into The Land of Lorne.