Eilidh Iona Hutchison

Artist Statement

My work centres around themes of time, memory, decay and preservation, typically reflecting and referencing a transient and melancholic state. I explore these ideas through photography, installation, sculpture and sound. Ruined spaces are at the centre of my practice -  to me they are a place of solitude, simultaneously reflecting capitalist and political agendas of both the present and the past.

Georg Simmel wrote that when a building transforms into a ruin ‘the balance between nature and spirit… shifts in favour of nature. This shift becomes a cosmic tragedy… for now the decay appears as nature’s revenge for the spirits having violated it by making a form in its own image’. It is this balance, this shift, this space between, that interests me most.  Light plays an important role within my work because its relationship with time is so intertwined.

Auto-destructive art is a significant influence within my work, as its key concerns, anti-capitalism and anti-consumerism, directly reflect themes of the ruin. The process of creating works that destroy themselves is incredibly interesting to me as the indeterminacy and liminality of this act offers endless possibilities for transformation.  Most recently my work has been informed by the political acts of Margaret Thatcher and the lasting effects of her policies within Scotland; specifically the sites that were destroyed and the communities that were left in ruin.  I have been exploring this topic through the lens of auto-destructivism, particularly focussing on the continuing erasure of Scottish identity, language and culture.

The longer the resin blocks are left dissolving in the acetone the darker the space will become, as the bottom of the tanks will fill with broken flakes of resin; preventing light from the overhead projectors from shining through.