Elie Coutts: blog

We recently celebrated exhibition Critters Creepers Crawler, Sprouting Solitary Soarers by Elie Coutts and Cameron Morgan with a special opening event that saw the Workshop filled with folk.

We first got to know Elie’s work through Gaada’s Peer Group programme, and have hugely enjoyed celebrating Elie’s growing practice throughout this commissioned project.

Elie has generously written the following blog sharing her first experience of working collaboratively:

“My introduction to Gaada was at a peer group meeting in 2021 at which I met some fantastic Shetland creatives.

Later that year, Gaada was invited by Project Ability to commission a Shetland based artist to collaborate with Cameron Morgan and they approached me to see if I would like to be involved. Of course i said yes. It was a great opportunity and I have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.

I think my biggest takeaway from the project is that I have gained confidence and can see a really exciting evolution in my work. Working in collaboration with another artist, with what was effectively a permission slip to experiment, enabled us both to try new things and see if we could push our boundaries.

The project began with an introductory call to discuss the remit, which was to agree a theme and make a body of work in conversation over Zoom to be exhibited in Shetland and Glasgow the following Spring. Discovering we both had a love of the natural environment and spending time outdoors we agreed on the theme ‘Nature’ with a focus on embroidery.

We set ourselves a task to use our regular walks to gather inspiration, photographing anything that could inspire our work and give each other a sense of our local environment. Walking around Lerwick in October looking for things to photograph was a struggle at first. There wasn’t much plant life to be seen, the scenery had lost its colour and I could barely hold the camera steady the wind was so strong. So I homed in on the gulls flying in the updraft and photographed them soaring above me and on weeds breaking through concrete on the pier or pushing through cracks in walls and buildings.

On our next zoom call Cameron and I were pleased to discover that we had both homed in on nature that is generally overlooked or dismissed in hostile or man made environments. Pigeons and herring gulls for example that are often considered vermin. This was the seed from which the work for the exhibition grew and over the following months we shared photos of our drawings, paintings and embroideries and discussed our work and thoughts.

Working with Cameron made me reconsider my approach to making art. I was inspired by his bold use of colour and expressive mark making. He works quickly, instinctively and confidently and the resulting work is bursting with energy.

My own working style is very slow and considered so I challenged myself to try something bolder, and more expressive. Gradually over time, while experimenting with different ideas, my work shifted away from my usual, detailed small pieces, to larger textile works with lots of negative space.

I was thinking a lot about how time in nature affects the human psyche. The walk around Lerwick, that I used as my inspiration for the project, had been my daily lockdown walk, so I reflected a lot on that time and how being outside and appreciating my surroundings had helped me to deal with the stress and uncertainty.

Towards the end of the project, I tried scaling up for the final piece. It was really exciting to work on a larger scale for the first time. The result is a re-imagined view of the cliffs around Lerwick bringing together elements of my smaller works and capturing something of my inner world and the feelings I had on the cliffs in the wind.

The Gaada x Project Ability project not only helped me push my practice in new directions and gave me the opportunity to collaborate with an incredible fellow artist, but it has inspired me to try new things, and trust my instincts.

It was a pleasure to take part in and I hope you enjoy seeing mine and Cameron’s work which is currently on display in the Gaada Workshop, Burra, Shetland.”

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Critters Creepers Crawlers, Sprouting Solitary Soarers by Elie Coutts + Cameron morgan is open from 29 April - 31 July 2022.

Gaada welcomes visitors to view the work in Display within the gravelled area outside the building, open 24/7.

additional work is also available to view inside the Gaada workshop, please email info@gaada.org to arrange a viewing.