WHOLLY MACKEREL

Rosalind Wates boldly goes where few are hardie enough to follow. Summer '96 saw her on North Uist in the Outer Hebrides off the coast of Scotland. The project:- make a giant (5 metre) fish, using "found" materials- and it had to cope with being submerged by occasional high tides.....
The idea was to make it look as though this fish had been flung ashore by the hand of a sea god, as a good luck talisman for the local fishermen, and as a monument to their way of life, now sadly declining. The mackerel was a good choice because of its rich patterns; and Rosalind was fortunate in the wealth of local pebbles (translucent quartz, black basalt, greys, pinks, yellows), green and brown glass, and blue mussel shells.
It was her first three-dimensional project, and the basic structure consisted of an aluminium frame bolted to the rock, covered with galvanised mesh, the whole being rendered with a special sea-water-proof material called Powerwall^TM.

This William MacGillivray Sculpture Project proved much fun: one day there was a pebble-collecting barbecue involving local artists and their families, and another time two fiddlers played Scottish music as Rosalind and her assistant Yvonne Murray mosaiced .....

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