Dumfries and Galloway has unveiled two new art installations to celebrate sense of place in both the east and west of the region. Lead artist Matt Baker has created a bold design beside a fortified towerhouse in Stranraer, while in the historic Friars Vennel in Dumfries, which leads from the centre of the town down to the River Nith, there is now a new permanent sculptural intervention by ceramic artist Will Levi Marshall.

Will Levi Marshall’s work is striking and distinctive in its design, yet embedded in the stories of the locality. ‘Myndin the Fuird’(Remembering the Ford) aims to reconnect Friars Vennel in the
viewer’s mind with the dark age ford on the River Nith below.

Will Levi Marshall has formed an undulating structure from granite blocks, redolent of the famously powerful River Nith in full spate. Its curves are highlighted by the artist’s own glazed ceramic tiles which give the impression of dark and swirling waters. Each ‘wave’ carries text making up the poem ‘Sons O Selgovae!’ commissioned as an integral part of the sculpture and written in Scots by award-winning poet Rab Wilson.

Over to the west, the newly developed Castle Square in Stranraer has just been opened to the public. Lead artist Matt Baker’s bold designs have re-invented the Square, creating a dynamic civic space in the centre of the old town.

Throughout the site a number of sculptural interventions inform the design. Matt’s central stone wall represents the geology of the region from the coast to the mountains. At its east end there
is an anchor and at the west end a cairn, from which grows a silver birch. The wall changes in feel from ‘ocean’ at one end to ‘hill’ at the other and this is reflected in the form of the whinstone along its length – changing from its slate-like form to large boulders. A poem by Mary Smith is carved into the top of the wall.

For both these towns in South West Scotland, the new artworks are both culturally and economically important. Both Castle Square in Stranraer and Friars Vennel in Dumfries are physically enhanced by the work. But equally importantly, the installations are embedded in
what is particular to these places: their human histories, their locations, their geology. As a result, these installations have a special local vibrancy – they activate the space they stand in
and add to human understanding of our place in the world.

Image: Friars Vennel Will Levi Marshall / Zvonko Kracun.