Please select a track to listen to while you view the cloud exhibition.
Iolaire Song - Cello
Iolaire Song - English Lyrics
The Darkest Dawn - Mhairi Law
From left to right.
1.1.1919 The Waiting - Geoff Stear, 1.1.1919 The Sinking - Geoff Stear, Storm Rising - Irene Blair, North West into a Force 8 Northerly - Irene Blair, Last Words? and Last Words? (Gaelic Version) - Margarita Williams, The Beasts of Holm - Gill Thompson, Beasts - Gill Thompson, The Beasts of Holm (Sculpture) - Andy Laffan.
Hulabhaig Presents...
New work from six Hebridean Artists reflecting the events of 1919 when HMY Iolaire struck the rocks known as Biastan Thuilm (The Beasts of Holm).
Over 200 lives were lost in the worst tragedy ever to hit the Outer Hebrides.
“Scarcely a family was left untouched in the close-knit communities of Lewis and Harris. The homes of the island are full of lamentation — grief that cannot be comforted.”
The Scotsman, 6 January 1919
“Not a few of them had suffered shipwreck time and time again during the war, but always they escaped. And now with all these perils past and the peasce and comfort and liberty so well earned in prospect, they come home only to be creully done to death within twenty yards of the shore and at the very entrance to Stornoway harbour!”
Stornoway Gazette, 1919
“We never spoke about it, I never asked her about it. My husband and I never mentioned it in front of her and our children knew it was never to be brought up when she was in the room.”
“That’s quite extraordinary when you think about it. A woman widowed by the Iolaire disaster, her daughter orphaned by it. The widow living so long that the daughter was 66 years old when she died - and they never once discussed it.”
“And I think that, more than anything else, brings home the horror of the Iolaire disaster in the Lewis community.”
Extracts from - The last Iolaire orphan. Transcript of interview with John Macleod, author of ‘When I heard the Bell’
The Darkest Dawn 1/5
The Darkest Dawn 2/5
The Darkest Dawn 3/5
The Darkest Dawn
Mhairi Law
h: 103 w: 103 d: 3(cms).
Medium format photographs, inkjet prints, 2018.
We live in a world filled with light. It is often taken for granted that this invisible source is available to us at the flick of a switch. Cities spill their light for miles around, torches are accessories on gadgets, and ships are guided safely into harbours. Dark skies can be rare, and in some areas protected. It’s not often we find ourselves in complete darkness, with no option of light to guide our way, or keep us from harm.
In the early hours of New Years morning 1919, this would not have been the case.
This photographic series Dawn, aims to capture this sense of blackness felt on one of the darkest nights in Lewis's history. The monument serves as a constant, a memory still felt.
Perhaps the most harrowing moment of this memory comes with the arrival of dawn. Light slowly breaks over the Beasts of Holm, onto a very different island.
The Darkest Dawn 4/5
The Darkest Dawn 5/5
The Beasts of Holm (detail)
The Beasts of Holm
Andy Laffan
h: 100 w: 153 d: 91(cms).
Sculpture (50 kgs).
Lewisian gneiss on kitchen table.
This sculpture is a commemoration or remembrance that focuses on the impact the Beasts had on the families, waiting in deep anticipation of the return of the sailors after four long years of fighting. The wives, parents, sons, daughters brothers, sisters, girlfriends and a whole community joined together by collective relief that these men, who had survived against the odds, were coming home.
The sense of celebration was even more keenly felt, because they would be returning and would be reunited on the morning of the New Year - a New Year of peace that meant healing and new beginnings, meals were prepared and the traditional kitchen table was laid in anticipation.
Around 2.30am that night, with the lights of Stornoway Harbour in sight and just yards from home, the Iolaire struck the rocks known as the Beasts of Holm. The sea, as it so often does in poor conditions, acted swiftly and callously, changing the table of celebration to a table of silence.
The Beasts of Holm
The Beasts of Holm (above)
1.1.1919 The Sinking!
1.1.1919 The Waiting
The Beasts of Holm
Gill Thompson
h: 44 w: 22 d: 0(cms).
Original collagraph print.
This print is an original hand-pulled collagraph on Somerset paper using Caligo inks. It depicts the rocks on which the Iolaire foundered 100 years ago. At low tide they are visible but at high tide the Beasts lurk below the surface and are treacherous to boats large and small.
Beasts
Gill Thompson
h: 44 w: 24 d: 0(cms).
Original collagraph print.
This print is an original hand-pulled collagraph on Somerset paper using Caligo inks. It depicts the rocks on which the Iolaire foundered 100 years ago. At low tide they are visible but at high tide the Beasts lurk below the surface and are treacherous to boats large and small.
Last Words?
Margarita Williams
h: 26 w: 40(cms).
Painting
Watercolour.
“I found this a difficult subject to represent in a sensitive way. Focusing on the last moments of those who did not survive, I imagined the dark movement of water, and the last desperate thoughts of the men, as hope of all human help faded away, the only hope was what lay beyond the deep.”
Last Words? (Gaelic version)
Margarita Williams
h: 26 w: 40(cms).
Painting
Watercolour.
“I found this a difficult subject to represent in a sensitive way. Focusing on the last moments of those who did not survive, I imagined the dark movement of water, and the last desperate thoughts of the men, as hope of all human help faded away, the only hope was what lay beyond the deep.”
An tionndadh Gaelic le DEM (Translation by Donald E.Meek).
