Born Were Hands (spring 2027)

Announcing a group exhibition at the Colstoun Coach House in Spring 2027. Each artist in this exhibition begins with a material that existed before them: stone moved by ice, earth from a riverbed, fibre, driftwood, ancient ash, the pages of other people’s books. Through hard work they negotiate with it. The material resists, suggests and sometimes refuses, and each artwork becomes a ledger of that negotiation, recording the effort and the time.

Look closely and you will find the hand everywhere. A chisel mark left unsmoothed. Dye that has taken unevenly. A fibre that will not lie flat. These are not errors. They are evidence that a person was here, deciding, adjusting, listening. That evidence stirs a deep need to touch and be touched, in an increasingly sterile world. Hold on to that tension. It is how the hand speaks to the eye, and it is one of the things that keeps us human.

“Tools were made & Born were hands / Every Farmer Understands.” William Blake wrote these lines in Auguries of Innocence, around 1803, as the industrial age was beginning. They read differently now. Machines produce images, objects and language without a hand ever touching them. Vast fortunes are spent on leaving the planet, while the work that once gave people their place in the world is automated away. We are taught to admire the flawless, and left to wonder what remains for us.

This exhibition offers an answer. Perfection is not the absence of flaws. It is the presence of attention, of time, and of a person who chose. The hand is not obsolete. It is how we have always come to know the world, and how we will go on knowing it.

born were hands
Colstoun House, spring 2027