The William MacGillivray Bi-centenary Sculpture Project on North Uist provided an exciting brief for an out door project: to create a sculpture that celebrated the local environment and wildlife using ‘found’ materials. For me it was an ideal opportunity to pursue the use of natural material in mosaic, and to branch out and create something three - dimensional for the first time. The project was sited on a rock approximately one hundred metres from the Taigh Chearsabhagh Art Centre at Loch Maddy. I am grateful to the Grenville Estate for giving permission for this.

The island proved to have a wealth of coloured pebbles, particularly on Baleshare Beach at the south western end of North Uist. Glorious translucent egg - like washed quartz; shiny black basalt (more difficult to find); a range of wonderful grainy cold greys; pinks and yellows: all these were worked into the mosaic, as well as green and brown worn broken glass, and blue mussel shells. With this richness of colour available it was important to utilise it in a way that related to the island.

The giant fish concept took shape because the sea and fishing are so important to the island. The mackerel emerged ahead of other contenders such as salmon and trout as a result of its rich patterning. The fish is five metres long; this scale is important firstly and obviously because it gives scope for the pattern to be delineated using the small pebbles and shells, and secondly because when so much larger than life, subjects like this can take on an iconographic significance. Ancient memories tell us that these mini-god-like representations may bring good fortune if respected; in this case, good fishing. Much more relevant to today is the thought that as the mackerel fishing has declined so dramatically in recent years, this mosaic sculpture may take on the role of a monument.

I wanted the sculpture to carry this weight whilst at the same time possessing an air of casualness, as if some great hand had just flung it down upon the rock, straight from the sea.
The structure of the mackerel consists of an aluminium frame bolted to the rock; this is covered with galvanised mesh, which in turn is covered with Powerwall. This latter is a cementitious and resinous render which, incidentally, is used to coat lighthouses with, and is tested on sea water. The sculpture is designed to cope with the sea as several times a year it is submerged by high tides. The pebbles and shells are embedded using this same Powerwall, and the mussel shells are also coated with a cement hardener to give them extra toughness. I was helped with the structure by a Glaswegian sculptor called Derek Cunniningham.
As the weather was not reliable it was important to make use of every fine day. Even wet days and Sundays were spent collecting materials. One Sunday we held a pebble collecting barbecue with some of the artists connected to Taigh Chearsabhagh Art Centre and their families, which was enormous fun. Another fine day two fiddlers played traditional Scottish music to us on the rock as we worked, producing an almost William Morris - like Utopian scene. Then there was the day the tide came up higher than we had bargained for, and the site was hastily abandoned as it became clear that our work would soon be under water!

The project was much assisted by the warmth and friendship shown by people on the island. In particular Taigh Chearsabhagh hosted it with great generosity, and I am grateful for this. I was also fortunate in my assistant, Yvonne Murray, (the previous year’s textile artist in residence).

To conclude: despite one or two minor dissatisfactions with one’s work that always accompany a project on this scale, I am in general well pleased with the result, particularly from the point of view of its being my first three - dimensional mosaic project.

All in all, it has been a tremendous adventure and I look back on it with great pleasure and wistfulness: the summer I lived in a caravan by the sea in the Outer Hebrides and made a giant mosaic fish on a rock.

Rosalind Wates. September 1996