BUISNEACHD: Moira Maclean

Moira Maclean is an MFA graduate from Grays School of Art, Aberdeen. Her work deep-mines the recent past: she has ‘raided’ abandoned croft houses of the Islands, accumulating artefacts and particularly wallpaper, to explore issues of dereliction, decay, transience and diaspora, notably from a female, domestic perspective.

Ghost Cat

Buisneachd (Gaelic for witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment). The Outer Hebrides are saturated in tradition, custom and folklore, drawing on Irish (Gaelic culture), Scandinavian (Viking) and all parts between. Some practices have disappeared, some have endured. A house, a village, an island can become a crucible for beliefs and practices, where culture grows as on a Petri dish. Her exhibition Buisneachd relates to the home, the hearth, the earth and the ether. Rescued artifacts, symbols, domestic detritus, mirrors, accretions of wallpaper, maternal trappings and documents of abandoned spaces, insinuate a deep past, unseen forces and malign, unsettling influences.