School of Fine Art Sculpture & Environmental Art
Shannon McCrory
I am an artist from West Lothian, where I still live and now work. My practice is rooted in the exploration of local archives and the history of my collection of hometowns in and around Livingston. By delving into these resources, I preserve fragments of local history and reimagine them as semi-fictional artifacts. My work aims to interrogate the concept of monuments—what they represent, who they are for, and their relevance in small working class towns.
For my degree show I have meshed the two most significant components of my practice; intricate dioramas and text. I would like to create a compelling dialogue between written narrative and sculpture. Central to my practice is the belief that the art world can be enriched through the inclusion of working class voices, particularly those of women.
Works
‘Dear Liz’ (2024-25)
The Lizzie Brice roundabout in Livingston, West Lothian is the only of the four ‘Landmark Project’ roundabouts to be named after a person. Notably, to me, a woman (when many of the other statues and monuments in West Lothian are attributed to men, miners and soldiers.)
There is so little written on Lizzie that you can fit all the information on one page. If you ask anyone in Livi about Lizzie, they’ll tell you she was a witch. Many know now that Lizzie had no connection to the witch trials that took place in the Kirk of Calder, Mid Calder. She actually lived in an entirely different century. Even so, most only know her as a faceless ‘crabby old woman’ who was a foster mother before that really had a name. She lived on a farm with her husband, her maiden name was Baxter and the roundabout misspells her married name; it’s Bryce.
This is, put as short and quick as the written research itself, all we know about Elizabeth. I could not find any more information about her, even in the archives and I could not get in touch with the one person who had written this single page on her.
Yet her name is on the roundabout, her strip in Mid Calder still dedicated to her, a now demolished pub, a football team and she was once relevant enough to have her strip on a map.
In an effort to create a semi fictionalised history with Lizzie, I began writing letters, knowing they were one sided, never to be answered. I wanted to create a written record with Liz, even if it was fabricated. My own archive.
It’s hard to come from somewhere small and actually leave it. It’s even harder to imagine what will happen if you never leave. If your town is so small it’s actually a village, you’re surrounded by farmland, your shops are no longer family owned but replaced by the overpriced express stores and betting shops that are stamped in every small place, at first a novelty but ultimately disappointing. You’re a woman who lived a perfectly normal life, though there was something that led to you being encapsulated here forever; locals feel a need to tie your simple story to the pain of other women to make sense of your notoriety.
The degree show installation featured here contains fragments of letters written to Lizzie, surrounding a diorama of the now demolished Lizzie Brice pub in Dedridge, Livingston.
