Connections

So many connections shaped this project.

Seeing the work together in the gallery, and listening to people talking about it, I am delighted to find that the connections are still happening.

'Apothecary', 2025. Sian Thomas and Fiona Sanderson

These are the biographies of nearly 30 of our early women doctors working in Orkney, pre 1910.

We attached the biographies to bottles from an old apothecary chest. The more details we had for an individual doctor, the larger the bottle allocated to her biography. For most of them, we only have a name.

Walking around the exhibition, an island elder was drawn to this chest, and she picked up one of the very smallest bottles, 'That's just like one Dr Garvie gave me' she said.

'It was for drops, for my ears, and I kept it, for it was very good for using to clean off my slate at school'