Awarded Saltire Society 90th Anniversary Commission | To See Oursels

I’m delighted to have been selected for the 2026 Saltire Society’s To See Oursels commission, one of eight contemporary artistic commissions.

Cornmill Fountain, Galashiels

I’ll be developing a new site-responsive work, Confluence; Memory in Flow, for the Cornmill Fountain in Galashiels. Designed by Robert Lorimer, the fountain marks the historic meeting of waters where the Mill Lade diverted water from the Gala Water to power the town’s textile mills.

The project explores confluence as the meeting of waters, histories and communities. I’m interested in how memory is layered and continually reshaped, and in bringing attention to the often-overlooked stories of the mill workers whose labour helped build the town.

Working with materials and processes that echo water, textiles and with printmaking, I’ll create a subtle intervention that responds directly to the site. Drawing on archival research, oral histories and the physical landscape, the work aims to reveal what is already present but often unnoticed, inviting reflection on place, memory and Scotland’s industrial heritage.

I’m very grateful to the Saltire Society for this opportunity and look forward to sharing the work as it develops over the course of the commission.

Council member Duncan MacLaren said, ‘This commission, focusing on the Cornmill Fountain in Galashiels, fits the Saltire Society’s engagement with Scottish cultural and industrial heritage and contains a vital aspect of active community participation.’

More about To See Oursels: a bold new programme of artistic commissions

In a bold new programme, the Saltire Society announces eight exciting and varied contemporary artistic commissions. Funded by the Society, these new awards are offered to artists the length and breadth of Scotland in celebration of the Society’s 90th year as a supporter of and campaigner for Scottish culture, with the strapline, ‘Reimagining Scotland’.

Inspired by Robert Burns’s lines

O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!

the Society invited artists to submit proposals for small, commissioned works which would spark conversation around the theme of memorialisation in Scotland. These proposals would engage with the sorts of decision a country takes about monuments, statues, cultural objects, stories and sites, and how those can reveal much about how it sees itself and its values in modern times.