All of Grant’s work is underpinned by intellectual ideas derived from, and inspired by, poetry, literature and philosophy.
Grant’s six-week RSA Residency in Cromarty took place during the first pandemic lockdown in March and April 2020. Her premise for the residency was to explore real and imagined landscapes through an engagement with the mythic. Also to experiment with new mediums beyond painting, such as photography and site-specific installation.
As a result of the restrictions imposed by the lockdown, Grant’s attention turned to what she discovered during her daily walk. She began to photograph the local area using her iPhone and Polaroid camera, with a particular focus on a series of found sculptural environments. These included the ruins of a Gaelic Chapel and the monumental oil rig platforms and related shipping activity within the Cromarty Firth.
These landscapes became a series of ‘subjects to be investigated’ to which Grant assigned further allegorical meaning - the oil rigs becoming a metaphor for Valhalla, in Norse mythology a majestic hall for the slain, and the tow-ships the vessels in which the dead are carried to their final resting place. A twisted, discarded chair frame and the remains of a bonfire in the Gaelic Chapel became a metaphor for the Amfortas Wound, a mythical medieval king whose wound can never heal.
On her return from Cromarty, Grant was awarded Creative Scotland funding to develop these ideas further. This led in 2021 to Inscriptions in Arcadia, a commission from Forth Valley Art Beat for a series of site-specific installations on the theme of real and imagined landscapes in the area around the Bothkennar Pools, near Skinflats. It was here that Grant first began to cast discarded shotgun cases as a reflection on the dark side of the Arcadian dream.
Treatise on the Wound builds on Grant’s work from both Cromarty and Bothkennar, expanding her practice into gallery installations that use sculptural and found objects to further explore the nature of the ‘wound’.
