Elizabeth Ogilvie
Elizabeth Ogilvie is an environmental artist working with a fusion of art/science, producing experiential installations using water and video as her main media. Her work is deeply influenced by the people, landscape and atmosphere of St Kilda. Drawn northwards by the power of the elements, she explores the relationship between human lives and the natural world - wind, sea and weather becoming recurring forces within her installations.
Artist Statement
Writing about his native St Kilda my grandfather, Alexander Ferguson, wrote in a letter to the Earl of Dumfries: “I think there is no paradise on earth like it”.
My interest in water and the Ocean lies deep within my personality and ancestral background. My mother’s people, the Fergusons, came from the remote archipelago of St Kilda.
This seminal island and its grouping of stacks far out in the Atlantic fired my imagination from early childhood as did my mother’s striking accounts of living there off and on as a child, often left with relatives by her father Alex Ferguson who came from the island but had emigrated to Glasgow and continued to travel back and forth in his yacht.
Owing to this personal history, my inbuilt compass always points me North and to remote locations. While this island within directly influenced earlier stages of the work shown at the Arnolfini and Talbot Rice Gallery, for example, I can still identify its power within my current practice.
PHYTOPLANKTON
Portal into installation
Indoor Video Projection
Three channel (3 x 4k) colour video projection onto two-way theatrical gauze, visible from both sides.
Size: 15m x 3m | Duration: 30 minute loop | Sound: silent
Ogilvie + Page, 2025
“St Kilda exists in the terra incognita of our imaginations
This living island continues to resonate with the unique way of life of its former inhabitants. With its breathtaking location amid a pristine ocean and vertical stacks, it is a deeply moving place to visit.
We think of the natives of St Kilda and their resilience, inventiveness and extraordinary existence in this, their whole world, situated in the wild and powerful ocean.
How best to inspire and inform the public through an exploration of the place itself and acting as a memory curator for a live story? Not in the form of a traditional museum but in this radical and ground-breaking building by Dualchas overlooking the stacks at Mangurstadh providing a living homage and a significant experience.
I thank all involved sincerely for this ground-breaking centre and I am so excited by the prospect!”.
Elizabeth Ogilvie
INTO THE OCEANIC
Documentary and Outdoor Projection
COP26 Glasgow, 2021
Projection documentation:
Peoples Palace, Glasgow
Ogilvie + Page, 2021
INTO THE OCEANIC
Documentary and Outdoor Projection
COP26 Glasgow, 2021
Projection documentation:
Saint Luke’s, Glasgow
Ogilvie + Page, 2021