New Work by Sheila Mortlock for UNmaking

With our latest exhibition UNmaking opening next month in Stroud, our most northerly member, Scots artist Sheila Mortlock shares the story behind her impressive new work, Dualchas. In this post, she delves into her creative process, her love of the landscape at Aultgrishan and the deep-rooted cultural inspirations shaping her textiles, and what viewers can expect to experience when the exhibition opens.

The kilt in Scotland represents so much of our heritage and culture—you may say it is the epitome of that ancient tradition of Scottish dress still relevant today. Therefore, it seemed appropriate to use that word as the title for my Unmaking piece.As a child I wore a kilt a lot, my dad and his forebears went to war in a kilt, and today the kilt has great popularity at weddings and other formal events – it’s the go-to form of dress for most men on these occasions. However, it was this connection to heritage and tradition that started me thinking that creating a kilt might be what I wanted to make for the exhibition.

When I was thinking about Unmaking, I came across a poem by Norman MacCaig, the Scottish poet, and some lines particularly resonated. I couldn’t get them out of my head because they spoke about how I felt about my connection to this small area of the North West Highlands that has been inspiring my work over the last few years. In his poem A Man in Assynt, MacCaig talks about the owned land of the Highlands and questions who is obsessed by it:

Who possesses this landscape? 

The man who bought it or

I who am possessed by it?

Norman MacCaig, from The Poems of Norman MacCaig (Polygon 2005)

With these thoughts in mind and after a lovely helpful chat over lunch with TSG Associate members Rose Campbell and Ali King, I started the process of preparing the fabric for the kilt. Now, a normal kilt is about 7m long before being pleated, but I was never planning to create a wearable kilt; what I wanted to do was create a piece that was the essence of a kilt, try to show the movement of a kilt, but have the key features of pleated fabric and a front panel with another that, if it was to be worn, would be underneath that front panel.

I started working on the front panel using fine linen, adding fabric, mostly silk, I had dyed, and little pieces of the cyanotype fabric that I had produced with Hannah Lamb, to create an abstracted design of the croft at Aultgrishan, bearing in mind the strong horizontal and vertical bands of colour in a traditional tartan to which I wanted to refer. I hand stitched areas to reinforce the visual idea of tartan: strong vertical and horizontal lines of stitch.

The main fabric, the pleated part of the kilt, is cotton organdie which I painted, using a sketchbook produced while being in Aultgrishan, as inspiration. The colour moves along the length of fabric as it did in the sketchbook with some mixed media and mark making. I wanted to keep the freedom and movement of marks as seen in the sketchbook. Once the pieces were finished, I stitched them together and then the job of pleating began. The overall length including the end panels was 3m, so just under half the length of a ‘real’ kilt. I knew from my samples that the pleats had to be quite deep, which explains why the finished kilt is showing that traditional ‘swing’.

I knew that while stitching the pleats there was little room for error, so I approached it cautiously. Anyway, I got there and finished the process with the addition of more hand stitch and the features you can see on the end panels.

My life-long interest in Scottish history has uncovered some facts about kilts that may be of interest. Within five months of the Battle of Culloden, April 1746, the British government brought in the Dress Act 1746 which came into force on 1 August of that year. Also known as the Disclothing Act, it was part of an Act of Proscription that made it illegal for men and boys in Scotland north of the Highland line running from Perth to Dumbarton to wear “Highland Dress”, including the kilt.

The Dress Act was a legislative measure enacted by the British Government aiming to suppress Highland Scottish culture, destroy the clan system, and prevent further Jacobite rebellions. Women were exempt, and so too were men who had enlisted in a regiment in the British Army. However, the suppression of Highland dress did mean that in many cases the link between Highlander and tartan was broken by the time the Dress Act was repealed in 1782. First-time offenders would find themselves imprisoned without bail for up to six months, while a second offence would be punished by transportation to the colonies for up to seven years—just for the wearing of a kilt or any of the paraphernalia. By the time Victoria was on the throne there was a renewed interest in tartan and kilts because she was interested, and of course Walter Scott’s novels encouraged a new look at tartan.

My kilt for Stroud reflects my love of the landscape, the movement of the trees, reflections on water, and of course personal family memories of a time long ago.

In Conversation with Sheila Mortlock

Materials & Process

Working with cotton organdie and fine linen is quite a contrast—how did the transparent quality of the organdie change how you approached painting and pleating it?

The cotton organdie was treated with acrylic matt medium which allows me to paint as if on paper—the liquid paint doesn’t flow as it can do on fabric. I can also add pieces of mixed media such as textures on tissue paper, script on paper, without having to go down a ‘textiles’ road. It makes the finished organdie more painterly.

You mentioned that pleating required intense precision with "little room for error." What was the most challenging part of translating your original sketchbook marks onto the fabric structure?

Once I got going with the painting I started to relax. However, I knew that once treated with matt medium the sewing holes would remain. Soft fabric you can pull and holes will often disappear, but not this process. It was a relief when that was done. 😌 I wanted to have the freedom, movement, that the marks in the sketchbook expressed and I hope I have done that.

Themes & Concept

Dualchas explores history, identity, and the land. How did reading Norman MacCaig’s poem A Man in Assynt change or focus your visual ideas for this piece?

MacCaig’s poem just jumped out at me—"that’s how I feel!" There are other lines in the poem that also fit with my thinking about the area that has such significance to me, but there are times when I look out at that landscape and it does feel as if it ‘possesses’ me.

The kilt is often tied to ideas of rigid tartan patterns, yet your piece incorporates abstracted cyanotypes and fluid painted marks. How do you balance traditional textile structure with your own artistic abstraction?

Yes, the rigid patterns of tartan were something I tried to fit into the kilt, but it was also important to get the movement of the kilt and of course the landscape which had inspired the sketchbook which had been the original inspiration. I tried to fit the traditional structure with the lines of trees, so yes, they don’t exactly follow what will be seen on a woven fabric, but there are linear marks within my painting.

History & Personal Memory

You shared that your father and his forebears wore kilts to war, making this a deeply personal symbol. How did those personal family memories influence the mood or small details of the piece as you stitched it?

I have a very strong feeling for my Scottish-ness, which must have come from my mum and dad and wider family on both sides. I have always loved history—in fact, had I not gone to art college I was going to do history at university—but I have found that when I am working on a project, whether that be a single piece or a series, it has to be anchored somehow to the history. An earlier series of pieces was about stonemason marks and I got really into exploring that subject as related to the history of church buildings. So, working on this kilt, yes there was that sense of personal family history, but also the wider history of how the sense of tradition, culture, and family can be linked to a piece of fabric. The Dress Act 1746 was a devastating blow for the Highlands and marked a real move towards the Clearances where people were forcefully removed from their homes. That’s why there are so many Scots in Canada, New Zealand, and Australia.

The Dress Act of 1746 attempted to break the connection between Highlanders and their culture. Do you see UNmaking as a way of reclaiming or re-stitching those broken historical links?

Yes, on reflection this kilt with its connections to a place as well as the heritage of kilts is a way of me unmaking that history. I’d love to think that my kilt went some small way towards reclaiming those links.

Join Us for the Opening

Don't miss the chance to see Dualchas and the full UNmaking exhibition in person.

Exhibition Details

• Exhibition: UNmaking
• Dates: 12 September – 8 November 2026
• Location: Museum in the Park, Stroud
• Admission: Free