Aghaidh Ris An Achadh:
Facing the Field
Fraser MacBeath

Main Gallery
Exhibition opening:  5pm, Fri 3 Apr 2026
Exhibition run: 4 Apr – 16 May 2026

This work examines cultural change and depopulation in my home in the Outer Hebrides. Gradually, across the world it feels as though culture has been reorganised into something administered rather than lived. It persists, but often as reference or memory.

In the Outer Hebrides, culture was not separate from daily life. It was shaped through proximity, shared responsibility, and attention to place. As populations thin and systems scale outward, those conditions become harder to sustain and tradition becomes performance.

The work asks whether small cultures can still be shaped collectively. The past is not finished but something we are responsible for continuing, and the installation explores how that inheritance sits within a contemporary context. Without collective action, culture risks becoming thin, fragmented, or lost.

The installation reflects this by changing its output in relation to the number of participants present: coherence emerges through gathering, and dissolves as numbers fall.

Can we live inside culture again, or are we destined only to pine at it through museum glass?

Fraser MacBeath is an audiovisual artist, composer and field recordist from the Isle of Lewis. His practice looks in part to continue the legacy of 20th-century field recordists who documented rural Scottish culture, while using the material to create contemporary artworks that reflect modern realities. His work often marries traditional elements with contemporary audiovisual technology. Creating narratives which weave past and present, evoking reflections on memory, sense of place, cultural identity, and the relationship between tradition and modernity.

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A Brush with Nature
by Clare Fowler Potts

Cafè Bar Gallery
Exhibition run: 21 Apr – 16 May

My deep love of nature and wildlife is transformed through my artwork into whimsical paintings designed to be fun and uplifting. I am inspired by the natural world and feel so fortunate to live in Port of Ness where many of the creatures in my paintings seem to either swim, fly or wander past my house.
I don’t take myself too seriously and my work is a little bit tongue in cheek and hopefully has a sense of humour running through it!

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