Valerie Gillies
Poetry in Public Places
"Valerie Gillies has been inspired to create intensely collaborative works with contemporary sculptors. The poems from these public arts installations, though included in The Lightning Tree (2002), must be seen with their sculptures in order to be fully understood, since they transform the landscape through the ever-present perception of the viewer.
In this way, Gillies finally creates an art form that lives up to the Scottish landscape's 'recreative' (rather than definitive) powers."
Professor Laura Severin
North Carolina State University
Inscriptions
Poetry by Valerie Gillies for site-specific installations.
Quick Water, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey, at Kirroughtree, Galloway Forest Park, 2001.
Tweed's Well, panel text in stone, with sculptor Fly Freeman, at the source of the River Tweed, 1998.
The Glide, text in bronze, with sculptor Denys Mitchell, at Coldstream, 2001.
Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, with sculptor and letter-carver Gary Fay, Leaderfoot near Melrose, 2001.
Below the Surface, text set in Albertus and screenprinted by Brian McBeath for The Trimontium Trust Museum, Melrose, 2002.
A Place Apart, text handwritten By Valerie Gillies and screenprinted by Evelyn Pottie for The Quiet Room, Marie Curie Hospice, Edinburgh, 2005.
Inscription for the opening of the new Edinburgh City Council headquarters at Waverley Court, 2007.
Exhibitions
Cross-media work with visual artists
| 2007 | The Narrative Thread, with fibre artist Anna S. King |
| 2001 | Galloway Forest Park, text in bronze, with sculptor Jake Harvey |
| 2001 | Coldstream, text on bronze handrail, with sculptor Denys Mitchell |
| 2001 | Ballad of Leaderfoot, text on stone seats, letter-carver Gary Fay |
| 2000 | Men and Beasts, exhibition with Rebecca Marr, art.tm gallery, Inverness & on tour |
| 1999 | Scotland to the World to Scotland, National Museums of Scotland |
| 1998 | Pax Romana, City Art Centre, Edinburgh Festival Exhibitions |
| 1998 | Tweed's Well, panel text on site, with sculptor Fly Freeman, Scottish Borders |
| 1998 | Poems by Perscription, Artlink Hospital Galleries, Edinburgh and Lothians |
| 1996 | A Night of Islands, with Will Maclean, Contemporary British Art in Print, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, and Yale Center for British Art, New Haven |
| 1994 | River Spirits, touring Dundee, Inverness, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh |
| 1990 | Tweed Journey, with Shelley Klein and Savourna Stevenson, Scottish Borders |