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Outdoor Exhibition

Image by John Sikorski

This outdoor exhibition of projected photo-works displayed around the village of Kyleakin launched Travelling the Archive in March 2016. Twenty images were projected and installed in the landscape where they were originally taken by seasonal visitor Miss Joan Wilcock. The exhibition was part of an exciting and unusual opening event.

Projections of the long forgotten photos lit up the village, and with many of the people captured on film still living in the village, memory walks led by some of those individuals brought the stories of the photographs to life and allowed the audience to relive past encounters with Miss Joan Wilcock and her camera.

‘Usually when an artist is asked to look at – and work with – a photographic archive, the people caught within the pictures are often unknown. The Joan Wilcock Collection has been the opposite of that experience, where virtually everyone in her images has been identified by Kyleakin people. Direct collaboration has built a portrait of a community that has seen significant change, and in turn they have built a portrait of Miss Wilcock herself…’
— Artist Nicky Bird about the project

Utilising the Collection as a means of sharing this heritage, a varied and lively programme incorporating; an outdoor exhibition, semi-permanent photo banner installations, a souvenir booklet, a talk – ​‘The Caledonian MacBrayne Story’ about the ferries and maritime history of the area, a series of memory walks, educational workshops and more were presented in Kyleakin over the summer months.


Màrt 2016

Travelling the Archive was a long-term project with artist Nicky Bird aimed at reimagining a time and place in Kyleakin’s past, for future audiences and current residents. Bird sought to share and make accessible the 1960s heritage of the close community of Kyleakin in the Isle of Skye, through a series of 35mm slide images taken during this period by seasonal visitor Miss Joan Wilcock.

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