2023 Residents

Fergus Hall is a musician, composer and artist from the west of Scotland. As a musician he is happiest inhabiting the intersections of musical practices, namely those of contemporary classical music, sound art, improvisation and jazz music. 

Much of his creative practice is influenced by ocean ecologies, from fun ensemble pieces about finding sounds on the beach written for young musicians, to large electronic works about cetaceans and anthropomorphic sounds in the hebridean oceans.  

Fergus is also half of the duo Long Green Jaws, along with artist and musician Sarah McWhinney. Drawing upon elements of improvised electronic music, puppetry and shadow puppetry, story telling, and analogue visuals, they create immersive performances inspired by coastal ecology and ocean folklore. 

I am a marine conservationist and writer from the Isle of Man and a passionate advocate for the marine life of the British Isles. The residency gave me the opportunity to experience the marine ecosystems of the Hope Spot, to learn from the inspiring community action protecting and restoring this special place and to take those lessons home.

The residency has inspired a series of poems that focus on hope; for healthier seas, sustainable use of marine resources and resilient communities. I’m also exploring the ecological, linguistic and historical linkages between the Argyll Hope Spot and the Isle of Man.

Luke Winter makes stories happen and public spaces more playful. He builds things and he writes stories and he says stories out loud too. 

Nicolette is a vocalist, composer and sound artist based in Glasgow. She is regularly commissioned to create work for theatre, film and dance. Her own work focuses on the intersection of personal, urban and wild landscapes.

She has a particular interest in our Scottish seas, with a solo gig theatre show ‘The Sea and Me’ and a podcast called ‘Seagazing’. Nicolette creates work that invites people to listen to themselves and their environment. 

Nicolette has created a series of compositions and podcast episodes in response to her time snorkelling in the Hope Spot.

Through painting and illustration, I explore human connections to natural places, and the effects and importance of these environments on our daily lives and wellbeing. I see my art as a way to map memories and share experiences of adventures outdoors, both large and small. Within landscape, I am inspired by sounds, and often take field recordings as I walk or sketch, to draw inspiration from the audio of these environments. Each painting is a reaction to the sounds, visuals and emotions experienced in our natural spaces, and are represented through colours, marks, textures and shapes to capture a sense of place. 

Rachel Brooks is an internationally acclaimed Wildlife Artist and Scientific Illustrator based in the Scottish Highland town of Oban. She specialises in marine wildlife, capturing high levels of intricate detail using ink. Drawing from her extensive background in Zoology, Marine Biology, and the Scuba Industry, she has immersed herself in the field, spending years amidst her fascinating subjects. She is an advocate for celebrating the often over looked marine life found in the UK, and for shark conservation. Her work invites the viewer to explore hidden worlds and entire ecosystems, with a current focus on Scotlands coastal waters.

Renuka Ramanujam is a multidisciplinary printmaking artist, interested in how people and planet relate to one another.  She uses textural abstraction and tactile qualities in her work to create striking imagery that evokes a sensory effect.  

During the Hope Spot residency, Renuka was taken by the incredible characters and ethereal glow of the world below.  From Argyll, with Hope is a vibrant postcard snapshot of the fantastical mermaids tresses, brittlestar beds, bryozoan bejewelled kelps and more.  

I make work in response to an embodied experience of a landscape, and am currently using clay, watercolour painting, and film, to explore the fluid, spongy, protean and dazzlingly colourful landscape of the waters around the Argyll Coast, following a snorkelling residency with Argyll Hope Spot in 2023.

The paintings and ceramic pieces are inspired by the horizonless perspective of the snorkeler, the view from above, where everything comes up and towards. The flora and fauna are made mainly from memory and are not scientifically accurate.  The human body is suggested throughout, moving clumsily through a delicate ecosystem.