FERAL OUTDOOR ARTS NEIGHBOURHOOD RESIDENCY - ROBBIE THOMSON & ALICIA MATTHEWS
Background
This project is supported through a programme of work delivered by Feral and funded by Creative Scotland. Feral’s outdoor arts residency programme is aimed at Scotland based artists interested in developing outdoor or site-specific performance projects responding to landscape.
2026 Recipient- ROBBIE THOMSON & ALICIA MATTHEWS
Na Fir Bhreige
Our residency explores a small area of the Barvas moor, a mile and a half up the track from our home, where our vilage peat banks
are. We propose an active and mythic exploration of Loch Bruthadal as a site of preservation and conduit to deep time through sound, performance and sculpture. Peat preserves bodies, tools and traces of ancestry, slowing time and resisting decay. Water enacts sound through movement and tension. We are interested in how these material qualities shape our sense of “the moor” as both physical and psychological places, and how history remains present within the landscape.
Our approach will be investigative, phenomenelogical and, at times forensic. We will spend extended periods walking, snorkling and working on the moor. We will station our caravan next to the loch to use as a base and so we can return to the same sites in different weather and light conditions. The loch will be explored from above and below the surface, to encounter its living ecologies and darker, obscured depths. This work is driven by attention rather than extraction.
Sound-making will emerge from this process. Vocal drones, breath, and tones will respond to the scale and stillness of the moor, while field recordings from the loch and peatlands will form submerged sonic layers. Language and oral history, including Gaelic where encountered, will subtly shape rhythm and pacing rather than dominate the work.
At the end of the residency, we aim to share the work through a live performance and audio playback using a soundsystem placed out on the moor surrounding the loch. How does sound move us in this landscape, does it feel like the wind?
ABOUT ROBBIE THOMSON & ALICIA MATTHEWS
Robbie Thomson and Alicia Matthews are artists based in the Isle of Lewis.
Alicia’s past projects have used moving image, performance, sculpture and sound to explore technological hauntings, societal glitches, common land, geology and deep time - often as speculative fictions. Recent work uses haptics, text, drawing and ceramics to investigate the maternal body, witches, The Gaelic Otherworld and relationships between rusting detritus and blanketing bog.
Robbie works between visual art, music and theatre, his interests include the interplay of technology and consciousness, psychology, cybernetics, industrial landscapes and megalithic sites.
In 2025 they founded HAAR Projects to deliver ambitious and impactful projects in the Western Isles. They aim to create experiences that highlight our natural and cultural heritage, surprise and challenge audiences through artistic risk taking and collaborate with island communities.
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