This interview brings together Hebridean Horizon and artist Rutger Emmelkamp, co‑founder of KNOCKvologan Studio on the Isle of Mull. Rutger’s work is rooted in close observation of the Hebridean landscape, shaped by weather, tides, and the deep cultural values of place. His long‑form project Hebridean Horizons sits within a wider practice that merges art, ecology, and community, drawing on principles of connection to land and collective stewardship.
We invited Rutger to this conversation because his way of seeing offers something campaigns cannot generate alone: a slow, attentive, and grounded understanding of the horizon at a moment when the future of these seascapes is being actively threatened.
Before you read on, spend a few moments with Hebridean Horizons. Open the artwork in a separate tab and consider the landscape. Keep it open as you return to this conversation as Rutger refers again and again to details within the landscape.
🔍 Click image to view full widescreen panorama
1. What first drew you to the idea of documenting the Hebridean horizon, and why did this line, this meeting of sea and sky, feel like the right subject?
I’m from the Netherlands, where our landscapes are fully managed and manicured, including the national parks. The road and railway infrastructure is incredibly dense, and much of the country is essentially an industrial landscape. There is barely a place left that is self-willed. When I moved to Mull ten years ago, I was struck by its rawness — the power of the ocean, the volcanic rock, the storms. I’m convinced it’s crucial for people to be surrounded by natural forces larger than themselves. It is the human condition. I once read that the word “respect” comes from the same root as “awe.” Without that sense of awe, we lose something of what it means to be human — respect for our fellow humans, animals and plants. The Hebrides give that sense of awe, that feeling of being smaller than the natural forces around you. There aren’t many places left that offer that experience.
2. When you began the project, what did you hope the work would make people feel or realise about these landscapes?
When you first look at the photograph, you see spectacular clouds and winter light, islands and ocean. Only afterwards do you notice the villages, the abbey. Human presence is modest, but significant. People have lived here for 8,000 years, and human culture has been shaped by these landscapes much as it is today. I like to think that human cultures emerge from a place while simultaneously being cradled by it — one cannot really separate culture from the natural world. The photograph shows the raw power of the landscape, and at the same time, that sense of being held by it.
3. Your process is slow, observational, and deeply rooted in place. How does that method shape the meaning of the work?
All our projects at KNOCKvologan Studio are rooted in place, and that includes the work of our guest artists and fellow researchers. Together we explore the natural and cultural landscape and try to understand where we are, in terms of past, present and future. Culture is not set in stone — it has to be lived, it has to change. We need to stay open to that. It’s a balancing act between conservation and innovation.
Art is good at holding both, I think. It celebrates and highlights what is there, but it also dares to imagine how things could be. That helps people articulate who they are and where they live, which becomes crucial when external forces arrive and start changing things for us. It allows us to say: this is not who we are, and not where we want to go. So is artistic observation a form of stewardship? I’d say art facilitates stewardship — it becomes part of a wider, community-wide act of caring and shaping.
4. What values sit underneath the project, culturally, environmentally, or philosophically?
The core philosophy is the entanglement of nature and culture — the fact that every species living here now, and every species that has lived here in the past, is simultaneously shaped by and co-shapes the ecosystem. With this offshore development, we suddenly have a massive external human force radically reshaping our environment, and the fact that local communities have little to no say in that is unacceptable.
The emphasis on the Gaelic language in the photograph touches on something related. Language evolves in relation to place, and with the fading of Gaelic, much of that relationship and sense of belonging has faded with it. I wanted to contribute my small part to its revival.
5. Your work predates the current debates about offshore development, yet it feels relevant. How do you see the landscape as a political space?
We’re witnessing an unprecedented acceleration of extractivist policy worldwide, and that makes every landscape a political one. Remote places once out of reach of industry are now at high risk of being exploited. Neoliberalism — capitalism on steroids — recognises only one value, and that’s money. It has no limits. If MachairWind succeeds, we can expect much more of it.
Don’t get me wrong, though. This isn’t about being for or against renewable energy — of course I’m in favour, we all are. This is about who is involved, who profits, and who pays the price. Renewable energy has the chance to break from the “big oil” model, where profits flow abroad while the costs are absorbed locally. Renewables could be community-owned and fairly distributed instead. In the end, this is about democracy, and about vulnerable communities being pushed aside.
6. Your images capture scale in a way that industrial proposals often flatten. What do you think art can reveal that technical documents cannot?
The photograph captures scale in terms of both deep time and space. These are ancient, humbling landscapes with their own will and unimaginable power — it is not up to us to dominate or modify them. Technical drawings tend to flatten and erase that depth. They turn landscapes into functional space, where it becomes very easy to sketch in any industrial development without it feeling painful. They strip away any cultural sense, so the act of modifying the land becomes a neutral one.
7. How did living and working within island communities shape your understanding of the seascape?
One of the things I learned very quickly is that people here have, in the past, suffered various forms of exploitation — the feudal crofting system, the boom-and-bust kelp industry, the upheavals that led to the Clearances. These historical events still have ripple effects today. The community here is both vulnerable and highly resilient. There’s a strong ethic of looking after one another, and of perseverance. A lot has been thrown at these communities, and that hasn’t changed today.
That relationship with the ocean isn’t only practical, though — it’s spiritual too. Looking out at the horizon gives a sense of the eternal and the infinite that puts daily life into perspective. The sea is a space we don’t fully belong to — it’s the ocean that decides whether fishermen are welcome on any given day. It gives, and it takes. It’s also a space of grief: think of the men and women lost to it over generations. Part of what makes that horizon feel sacred is precisely that it holds those losses — in a real sense, the sea itself is a graveyard. If that horizon becomes an industrial one, those sea-graves are disturbed, even erased.
8. How do you feel about the prospect of your project potentially becoming a recording of a landscape at a moment of irreversible change?
That’s a terrifying thought, but not unthinkable. There are natural history museums now where visitors can interact with a hologram projection of a polar bear. Interactive! Most people have never seen a real one, and now we can go to a museum and play with a digital version instead. I think that’s one of the most disastrous and exploitative ways of dealing with loss — and it’s probably sold as engaging and educational.
People don’t mind losing what they don’t have, or don’t know they have. That last part is very much at stake here. If we don’t understand the value of this landscape, this horizon, we won’t mind sacrificing it for some “green energy,” destined for a handful of data centres.
9. What surprised you most during the project, either visually or emotionally?
I remember being fully absorbed in the technicality of making this photograph — it’s not as easy as it looks. I’d wanted to make this image for a long time, but I needed exactly the right moment in terms of light, wind, clouds. Technically it was quite challenging, so I practised many times on nearby hilltops.
There was so much to think about that I could hardly enjoy the scenery. But then, after many attempts and hours of waiting, I knew I’d caught the right moment — and finally I had the mental space to actually experience the light, the drifting clouds, the patterns the wind makes on the water. It’s funny how technology can get in the way of that pure experience, that sense of awe.
Thinking about it now, I fear the wind farm will do exactly the same thing — that it will stand in the way of the deep, emotional experience we need in order to be human.
10. Campaigns often rely on facts and arguments. Art works differently. How do you see the two interacting or even strengthening one another?
Successful campaigns need every tool available to them. We try to explain that these landscapes, this horizon, are cultural heritage — but that’s quite an abstract thought. I hope my photograph makes it more tangible.
Photography often catches a unique, fleeting moment, but with this project I tried to give the landscape a monumental, almost eternal status — timeless, in the sense that this is what it has always looked like. The same photograph taken hundreds, even thousands of years ago might have looked almost identical. That feels like an important point to make, because it shows just how radical, sudden, and irreversible the Machair Wind project would be by comparison.
11. When you represent a place as culturally significant as the Hebrides, what responsibilities do you feel as an artist?
The first time I heard a holidaymaker talk about the beauty of these “empty” landscapes, I felt a strong urge to do something about it with the skills I have. Around that time I came across an interview with the poet Kevin MacNeil, who talks about emic and etic points of view — the view from inside, from those who live the island life, and the outsider’s view — and the importance of finding the right balance between the two.
As an artist, I try to understand and see from within, but at the same time, it’s important to remain something of an outsider. That’s an intrinsic quality I shouldn’t lose, no matter how long I live here.
12. If you were to revisit the project now, what would you want to explore next?
There’s a project I started years ago that I’d love to develop further. It’s about representing the landscape through stories. It would be a virtual space with various levels of synchronicity to the actual landscape it represents — live weather data, seasons, tidal movement, day and night. The space can be navigated, but it starts out “empty.”
Through various projects and voices, the elements come to life. It’s the opposite of the cartographer’s view, where the landscape is filled in for us in the most objective, systematic, controlled and universal way possible. The “map” I imagine is hyper-subjective — a space where only lived experience represents and tells the stories.
13. What do you hope people carry with them after encountering Hebridean Horizons?
I’d hope for a sense of deep time and scale, and of how thoroughly human culture is woven into this place. That the land and sea are not ours to remake as we please. That we should feel humble and grateful to live here, and that this landscape continues to inspire so many who come to it.
FIND OUT MORE:
About Rutger Emmelkamp
Rutger Emmelkamp is a visual artist and co‑founder of KNOCKvologan Studio on the Isle of Mull, a place‑based arts and research initiative exploring the relationship between landscape, ecology and culture. His work is rooted in long‑form observation of the Hebridean environment, shaped by weather, geology and the deep cultural values of place. Through projects such as Hebridean Horizons, he examines how human identity emerges from — and is held by — the natural world.
Rutger also co‑develops Knockvologan Studies, a “study place without walls” bringing together artists, researchers and local knowledge holders to explore the entanglement of nature, culture and community.
Explore more:
- KNOCKvologan Studio — https://knockvologan.net/
- Knockvologan Studies — https://knockvologan.net/studies-projects/2021/12/11/hebridean-horizons