Inchkeith
In 2024, we were supported by Creative Scotland to create a series of comics culminating in an exhibition, I am a Rock, at Out of the Blue Drill Hall in Edinburgh.
The works focus on exploring the rich history of Inchkeith, an uninhabited island in the Firth of Forth. In developing the work, we travelled to the island, read up on its mysteries and discovered a wealth of history through newspaper archives and interviews. We considered the many lighthouse keepers who tended to the lighthouse during its 200 years of manual operation, read of quarantines, strandings, drownings, and a language deprivation experiment that may or may not have happened. And we learned of the woman who found it to be a temporary home for her and 100 animals, a story that took Onion Press on an unexpected journey.
Explorations and visualisations
A small sample of our early illustrations, which eventually became risograph prints and postcards.
The Exhibition
I am a Rock spotlighted each of our new publications. We highlighted pages from our comics and shared some of our research for our largest work, Kathleen. We invited visitors to answer (and draw!) what they would do with an island and displayed their responses as part of the exhibition.