The hills really will be alive with the sound of music this weekend, or at least in Arbroath they will be. Thanks to a new work entitled “Blare” by artist Claire Todd, the town’s well-known Fraser of Hospitalfield Memorial Chapel will resound to the uplifted voice of a singing mountain between the hours of two and three on Saturday afternoon. The work was previewed on Tuesday to an invited audience.
“The Memorial Chapel is alive with fantastic stone carving, particularly of plants and flowers and other natural forms. There are amazing carvings of garlands of flowers which almost seem to shimmer, they’re so intricate. I wanted to make a piece which was just as passionate,” said Claire Todd.
She continues, “Though this is a Memorial Chapel, it has more of an atmosphere of celebration than sadness. I hope my work complements that. It’s about merging with nature and the earth, but in an ecstatic way. It is a piece about the wonder of nature and also about the idea of obsessive and compulsive exuberance and joy.”
The Chapel resonates to music at regular intervals, as local woman Ann Williamson sings a selection of popular love songs. She sits on the stone altar of the Chapel, her back to the door. The “hill” is a costume made of painted papier-mâché which Ann wears on her shoulders. Her head protrudes through the top, and her hair has been styled in ringlets. The sonorous green mass is covered with happily playing seals, a symbol, says Claire, of “baroque exuberance”. From Ann’s bare feet dangle brightly-coloured worms.
Claire Todd, 29, comes originally from Kingston in Surrey. After taking a BA in Fine Art at the University of Northumbria in Newcastle she went on to study scenography in Prague. She then moved to the Netherlands where she studied at the Rijksakademic in Amsterdam. In 2000 she won a Fleming Residency at Hospitalfield House in Arbroath, and later worked at the Grizedale Society in Ambleside in Cumbria. She is currently short-listed for a scholarship to study at the British School in Rome, a path which has led to international recognition for other British artists such as Mark Wallinger and Richard Billingham.
Claire explained “This piece, Blare, arose from the work I did in Arbroath as part of the Fleming Residency at Hospitalfield House last year. The theme of the Residency was the land and people’s relationship to it, and rather than make something where people were outside the piece, like a painting, I decided to make something which actually contained a person.” The Fleming Residency, she explained, is funded by Fleming’s Bank.
Next month Claire opens her first solo exhibition, at the Stella Lohaus Gallery in Antwerp, where the mountain costume from “Blare” will be on show, together with photographs of the event in Arbroath. “This is a really busy time for me,” she explained. “But I wanted to show Blare here in Arbroath first, because the Memorial Chapel was so important to the work.
“Also, people in Arbroath have really been very helpful. I love working here and I feel very relaxed and comfortable here. I think if you’re comfortable in a place then it’s easier to live in the world of the imagination, and that’s vital to an artist.” So impressed is she with the town in fact, that she now plans to settle permanently.
So how does it feel to be Scotland’s first singing mountain? “Well. You do realise I’m not a real singer, don’t you?” insists Ann Williamson. “I only sing in the bath. But this is great fun and I like the way my voice echoes.”
However the job does have its drawbacks, it seems. “You get a very cold bum sitting on this altar,” she confides, wriggling. “And my feet are freezing.” None of which is a surprise as it is even colder inside the Chapel than outside.
As Ann says this, Claire Todd and a helper move forward to support the human landscape while its bearer adjusts herself. “Here, you mind you don’t squash my glen,” says the mountain with a laugh, before breaking into song again.

Copyright Rod Fleming 2001