Interview with Merran Gunn
Exhibition for The Big Music Launch
Merran Gunn says:
"I began the idea for Banner for The Sutherland Pipers of Ceol Mor three years ago. On seeing clan banners, I decided to edge the linen on three sides with the Sutherland tartan, and let the painting have a 'hanging' feel. I wanted to incorporate the Sutherland lineage that appears in The Big Music. The list of names interplays with faint tracery of a tree, echoing the gardens of the Grey House, imagined and created by its women. A womblike concentric image that is held and supported as if by a female body, touches and extends into the men’s names. A female presence is signalled by sewing and embroidery, again preoccupations of the women of “the Grey house”. The music represented is both collaged and hand painted; both forms depict piobaireachd, the larger gilt collage being an abstracted expression of that musical form. Finally, the calligraphy in the painting ranges from tiny pencil handwriting to large expansive scrawls in inks, paint and chalk. This text is all taken from the final fragment in the book:
The hills only come back the same….
I don’t mind, I don’t mind, I don’t mind.
The display cabinets show various aspects of The Grey House; the Piping School, domestic life and the School Room. Artefacts have been carefully chosen by myself, with the help and stories of Margaret Mackay and her daughter Helen."
Photos courtesy of David Robb.
To view other videos about The Big Music, please see our news announcement.
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