ùir-sgeul | earth story: Exhibition

ùir-sgeul | earth story is a new exhibition by artist Eilidh MacKenzie, exploring oral traditions, maps, landscapes, archaeology and written materials related to Skye’s shieling culture. The exhibition takes place at Skye & Lochalsh Archive Centre, Portree.

Family preview: Friday 20 June, 2 – 6pm
Open: Friday 20 June – Friday 29 August 2025, Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays & Fridays, 10am-1pm and 2 – 4.30pm

Shieling, or àirigh in Gaelic, is the name given to both a summer pasture and to the small turf and stone bothies constructed on it, which were historically used as shelter or dwelling during the summer months. By way of song, stories, written and recorded memory, the exhibition brings together various accounts of shieling life in Skye, examining the relationship sheiling culture has to land use, biodiversity, community and tourism today.

Eilidh MacKenzie is a musician, visual artist and educator from North Skye. She has a deeply-rooted interest in Gaelic culture and local tradition, and her work explores aspects of the island’s physical and cultural landscape through printmaking and mixed media. Her work for the exhibition includes paintings, earth pigments, sound, historical objects and sculpture, as well as artwork made with children at Bun-sgoil Ghàidhlig Phort Rìgh.

ùir-sgeul | earth story is part of Curious Travellers, a wider, ongoing collaborative research project between the University of Wales Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, Glasgow University, the Natural History Museum, London. Curious Travellers focuses on the 18^th Century travel writer Thomas Pennant, who visited Skye and the Hebrides in 1772, and on how travel writing may have shaped contemporary perspectives of the Hebrides. Eilidh was invited to take part in a Curious Travellers artist residency with ATLAS Arts in 2024 with collaboration and support from Sabhal Mòr Ostaig.

On this residency, Eilidh encountered an image of a shieling site in Jura from 1772, which was drawn by Pennant’s travel companion, the artist Moses Griffith. Seeing this rare first hand account led Eilidh to begin to map various shielings across Skye, (of which there are hundreds), and to draw connections between the material culture, songs, and ecological significance of these places. In a chapbook to be published as part of the exhibition, she says:

“There feels a powerful connectedness through place, stone and soil to generations past, and at the same time an overwhelming sense of cultural loss; the loss of indigenous knowledge and culture, of sounds and language of place, a way of seeing and being that was shaped entirely by the land. In terms of physical proximity you can’t get any closer than where I sit to the shieling culture that has otherwise disappeared – but in the time that has passed between the last milking and my curiosity, almost everything else around this place is changed.”

This new publication will be launched with an artist talk on 7 August, available to purchase for £10. Book sale proceeds from the book launch will go to Skye Mountain Rescue.

The exhibition runs until 29 August, with an exhibition preview from 2 – 6pm on Friday 20 June, and a day of talks and sharings at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Thursday 19 June.