Australian ‘maker with words’ Fiona Dempster will stage a specially created solo exhibition for Strathnaver Museum exploring the concept of home.

Fiona explains:

“The Highland Clearances forcibly, and forcefully, removed people from their homes.

I have often wondered how the women who were forced to leave their homes found ways to make new ones. How did they put their family’s home back together, in a different place, in different ways? How difficult was it for them to create a new home? What fragments of their past home held memories that could help forge a new one? What did it take to build home anew?

As a person in the 21st century who is privileged to move between two homes, both vastly different from each other, I regularly ponder what home means. I look for similarities, threads of connection between the two, and I wonder.

The work in the exhibition foregrounds women and women’s work, including contemporary expositions of traditionally female skills such as dyeing, stitching and the use of threads. Artists’ books and small sculptural pieces offer new ways of considering the questions and of telling these stories.”