‘Middle Pier I, Isle of Coll, 2025’ was made during an RSA Research and Development Residency funded by the W. Gordon Smith & Jay Gordonsmith Bequest. The residency centred on grief, healing and the relationship between landscape and loss.
My brother John died in February 2023 after a series of strokes. Though he’d lost the ability to speak, we communicated with him spelling his thoughts out. He told me footage I'd shown him of waters around Coll, reminded him of his time as a diver and how the sea was “hypnotic, like fire”. During my residency on the island we’d discussed, I talked with islanders about their experiences, what the sea does to grief, and what grief does to the way we see. The image is a still from film footage gathered during that month on Coll.
I have long been drawn to the liminal quality of dusk and dawn, on the thresholds of night and day and am developing this as a distinct large-format photographic practice alongside my moving image work. ‘The Gloaming’, that particular word for the Scottish dusk, is central, its effect visible in the magical way that some pink thread tangled around the iron railing of the pier in the main village on Coll is rendered vivid against the dropping light.
This work is part of a developing body of practice exploring liminality, loss and the Scottish landscape, continuing into 2026.
- the artist
Sarah Wishart is an artist and film-maker living and working in Glasgow, she is co-director of the Sluice Film Festival alongside Karl England, and chair of the board of Offline, (formerly GAMIS) a specialist arts organisation dedicated to the production and exhibition of artists’ moving image. She has worked with organisations such as Tate, Forest Fringe, the Live Art Development Agency, and the Royal Conservatoire Scotland.