Leviathan
Summerhall Exhibition/Installation
July 20015
Off the western shores of Mull surrounded by the relentless onslaught of the Atlantic Sea lies the remote isle of Inch Kenneth.
Famous for its role in Boswell and Johnson’s Hebridean Tour travel journal, the island’s more recent infamy is its connection with the notorious Mitford Sisters. As Unity scratched swastikas on the windowpanes, sister Jessica reciprocated with incised hammer and sickle motifs.
Later Unity’s unsavoury links with Hitler were countered by Jessica’s intentions of turning Inch Kenneth into a Soviet Submarine base. Today contemporary conspiracy theorists blame underwater military testing for the strandings and deaths of whales throughout the west coast of Scotland. In a barn on the island lie two cetacean skeletons - mother and daughter.
For Leviathan Faithfull spent time on the Isle, investigating and documenting both the whalebones and the family relics, eventually succumbing to the island itself, engulfed by its anthropomorphic or zoomorphic forms.
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