Please Note this lecture was rescheduled from 19 August and your booking will carry forward. Now open for new bookings.
On the Other Side of Sorrow: Moving Forward from the Clearances
Exactly 135 years ago this November week, several hundred people invaded Pairc Deer Forest in Lewis. Some carried red flags. Others carried guns. Their aim? To kill their landlord’s deer in a place still containing the homes from which their parents and grandparents had been evicted.
Today that key moment in the struggle for Highlands and Islands land rights is commemorated by a memorial designed by Scottish artist Will Maclean. We have Will Maclean's work in the City Art Centre collection and hosted the major retrospective earlier this year.
To James Hunter, author and historian, this memorial serves as an introduction to his reflections on key themes in Maclean’s work – themes ranging from the Highland Clearances and their impact to the continuing need to revitalise and celebrate our long threatened and long denigrated Gaelic culture.
Hunter’s title, ‘On the Other Side of Sorrow’ is lifted from the concluding line of one of Sorley MacLean’s poems, An Cuilithionn, The Cuillin – a line selected in part because Will has spoken often of the way the work of this great Gaelic poet has helped shape both his thinking and his art.
On the Other Side of Sorrow: Moving Forward from the Clearances