Altered chairs installed in the landscape
Carved and shaped wooden chair with embroidery on found fabric, installed on a rock stack.
Wooden chair with pyrography drawings, installed in a meadow.
2025

Claire Weetman has crafted three chairs, two of which will inhabit Hilbre Island, off the coast of Wirral, during the summer of 2025. They are self portraits of a search for solitude in wild outdoor spaces – woodlands, meadows and beaches. Places that are familiar and everyday when explored with others but luxurious and wild when explored alone.

In the text, Camera Obscura, Roland Barthes compares familiar landscapes to the maternal body “There is no other place of which one can say with such certainty that one has already been there.” The wild locations where Claire has sought creative solitude from motherhood inspire the laborious processes used to camouflage the recognisable, familiar form of the chairs. Natural, elemental processes of fire, earth, air and water have slowly and meditatively altered these domestic objects so that they can exist in the wild – an attempt to turn a place where the maternal body may be able to sit, into the landscape itself. Installed around Hilbre Island, this collection of re-crafted chairs aims to capture the tension between a desire for connection and a need for space for ourselves.

About the residency

These works were created as part of the (m)other collective residency titled (m)other Wild, based on Hilbre Island during the Summer of 2025. Drawing out Hilbre Archipelago, in partnership with Independents Biennial Liverpool, features artist residencies, workshops, exhibitions, and performances that delve into key themes, including:

• Engagement with Nature: Fostering outdoor participation and artistic interaction with the island’s natural environment.
• Ecological Interconnections: Examining the relationships between different species and their habitats.
• Cultural Heritage and Community Narratives: Celebrating the history and stories that define Hilbre and its surrounding communities.
• Sustainability and Self-Sufficiency: Emphasizing practices that promote ecological balance and resourcefulness.
• Time and Tides: Investigating the impact of changing tides on the island and its ecosystems.

Drawing out Hilbre Archipelago is a project delivered by BADA projects and CASS: Centre for Arts, Science & Sustainability.