A diary about a residency with (M)other collective on Hilbre Island
Published in Exchange Magazine, Issue 18, September 2025
The full text is copied below.
Carving out time: Making art work in small moments
Recently, (M)other collective inhabited Hilbre island – a tidal island in Wirral, Merseyside, that is cut off from the mainland at every tide – as part of their research for “(M)other Wild” a series of new works, exhibited outdoors, that explored instinctual knowledge about the balance of natural life cycles that are endangered by modern society. This text is adapted from Instagram posts made by Claire Weetman.
29 April
Last time I was on Hilbre was at the start of my mothering, accompanied by my (now 10-year old) child who I carried across the sands in a sling. Today’s initial visit got me thinking about communication and how the telegraph house on the island is isolated but connected.
9 May
I’m adapting 3 chairs that I will place in the landscape. I’ve worked in my wild flower patch this afternoon to try and capture the feeling of the chair being surrounded by leaves and grasses. The other two chairs will be based on the tree canopy, and the strand line of the beach.
16 May
In between visits to Hilbre, I took myself off to sit among the tree tops in an arts space in St Helens, after crashing my phone to the floor this afternoon. An hour spent working on this ‘chair to sit in a tree’ has relieved the annoyance of my butter fingers and passed some time before I collect the big child from her club.
7 June
The isolation of Hilbre and the lack of power is forcing a different approach. The chair I found here is worn with rot and woodworm and it feels like the layered grooves of sandstone of the island. The battery engraver wasn’t doing what I needed, so I’ve tried making my own tools from the island:
A piece of sandstone that fits the hand and scours the wood
The edge of a mussel shell scrapes away the surface.
13 June
After a three day weekend on Hilbre I found myself mentally and physically exhausted. Six, 2-mile walks across the sands, meeting artists, exploring, helping to haul the trolley from island to mainland and physically changing the form of a chair with hand tools and rocks. I’ve made drawings as I studied the forms, shapes and colours of the weathered sandstone. I don’t feel like I’ve drawn this freely for a while. Being permanently outside I think contributed to a feeling of freedom. Immersing myself in between the rocky cliffs drawing outdoors really helped the carving of the chair.
7 July
Carved out some time to head over to Hilbre today where I spent time carving and shaping the chair. Today I’ve been thinking how being part of (M)other collective is a way that we carve out and create time for our creative practice and how that connects with the eroded sandstone of the island itself.
31 July
How to set up a (M)other collective exhibition on a tidal island:
Hugs, with an early lunch
Kids eat free
Smell the roses with a pre walk wee
Unload the car. Artwork, exhibition signage, food for three for 7 hours
Ice cream at the meeting point
Walk and talk across the sands
Carry an elaborately decorated dining chair across the beach for 2 miles
Sandy barefoot piggy backs to the compost toilets
Measure some walls and improvise a spirit level
Find better display solutions that the ones you’d planned
Follow the trolley tracks back across the sand
Family team photos in the setting sun
Dust off sandy toes
Take in the sunset before the snoozy drive home.
Balancing the needs of a family and the needs for ourselves as artists has been a core exploration of our residency on Hilbre. Sometimes we come with the kids, sometimes we escape from that responsibility, sometimes it’s somewhere in between when we help each other out. The art making doesn’t happen in isolation, it happens alongside ice cream eating, wee stops, long walks with heavy loads, giggles at windswept hair and long shadows at sunset.
6 August
Tools to carve out time
Sandstone pebbles were used to shape the chair ‘Finding Solitude: Island’. Each pebble wore down to a more solid core and Claire kept each one. They are exhibited as relics of the time spent working as an artist – each stone, worn down, marks a visit to Hilbre. Time that has been considered with and around her family, fitted in alongside work commitments and shared with the other artists in residence.
Time, carved out with tools /
Fashioned from the habitats /
We explore together
EPILOGUE: 9 October
Finding ‘Finding Solitude’*
Headlong into headwind
Extend the school run
from front door
to island shore.
Skeins break threads across the sky.
On the last journey of the season,
the final forked swallow’s tail flashes
south over the cliff.
The meadow. Empty.
Finding Solitude is missing.
Walk the perimeter, unfurl the gate
and feel how I have missed solitude.
Did someone steal my solitude?
Is solitude abandoned under bracken?
Or has a storm swept away solitude
and smashed it into pieces against the cliff?
But wait.
Through the aperture.
Yes! Back there in the dark.
Right at the back.
Just sticking out from an abandoned cabinet.
The silhouette of solitude.
DO NOT ENTER.
I’d recognise the turn of that leg anywhere
DANGEROUS BUILDING
like the cheek of a child whose tears I’ve wiped away.
STAY OUT
The delicate limb pokes out, the hours of attention in creation are familiarity.
No one else would have found my solitude.
I had to return and retrieve it for myself.
By myself.
And so, as the tide crashes in to surround me
I can wait.
With my solitude.
Ready for the next season
of observation and creation.
See you when the swallows return.
*My pyrography engraved chair, titled Finding Solitude had not been seen in its exhibition location in the meadow on Hilbre for over a month. This epilogue records my final visit to track it down as Drawing out Hilbre comes to an end.
