Author Description

"In Scotland's remote Outer Hebrides, amidst the rugged beauty of the Isle of Lewis, stand five powerful stone monuments. They speak of hardship, loss, but also of triumphs experienced by Lewis's crofting community in the 1800s and early 1900s. Richly commemorated here are the island's 'heroes of the land raids', and their courageous struggle to keep their lands, Gaelic culture and way of life. The last of the monuments stands apart, however, for it was commissioned to mark the centenary of the terrible sinking of HMY Iolaire on New Year's Day 1919. Artist Will Maclean, deeply rooted in the Hebrides and its history, oversaw the monuments' design between 1994 and 2018. He worked not only with fellow artists Marian Leven and Arthur Watson, but also with a team of Lewis people ranging from historians to engineers and the stonemason James Crawford. The result of these collaborations--and the subject of this book--are some of the finest examples of contemporary land art in the British Isles. Renowned photographer Robin Gillanders has documented for this publication the landscape settings, materials and form of these 'sentinels in stone.' Essays by distinguished Scottish art historians offer in-depth analyses of each monument and the ideas around them, and include Gaelic translations which tell a vivid story of events underlying the five structures. In exploring the works' telling iconography, the book points towards a wider narrative of cultural rebellion against imposed values. It also shows that, despite remembering often painful events, such monuments can create meaningful open-air meditational sites of great beauty and strength, where to memorialise is also to heal."--Cover flap.