For the series 'Seven questions with...' Art UK publishes interviews with emerging and established artists working today.

Matthew Dalziel and Louise Scullion met at Glasgow School of Art in the late 1980s. Louise remembers it was their mutual feelings about soil that drew them together. Soon after, they started collaborating and moved to the Aberdeenshire fishing village of St Combs. They described it as a place of stark contradictions, where big industries like gas met traditional baptisms at sea.

Matthew became an artist-in-residence at the gas plant. 'It was quite a brutal industry', he explained, 'in many ways; that's what we were interested in, the human condition in the face of these overwhelming technological forces'. This is something they both experienced growing up. In Helensburgh, Louise remembers the nearby nuclear base and the submariners who called her mother's B&B home. Growing up in Irvine, Matthew saw the local coal industry crumble and the monumental heavy machinery it left behind.

Nichol Keene: You spent two decades in Dundee, running a studio and raising your children. Support from Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design helped you win larger public art projects, including Catalyst, a sculpture outside Dundee's Greenmarket multistorey car park. What led you to create Catalyst?

Matthew Dalziel: At that time, in 2008, climate change was becoming more and more spoken about. We'd always had an interest in different materials and scientific discoveries, and there was a cement trialling in Italy, TX Aria, which was said to aid the condition of polluted atmospheres. But it was about four times the price of normal cement, so it never really took off.

Louise Scullion: We were intrigued by our human big-brain attitude to pollution: rather than look at the source, this product was investing time and energy into trying to cope with the particulates that cars were producing. We were aware of how complicated and strange it was.

Matthew: Covering it up was also quite Magritte-like, surrealist: hinting at the ambiguity of what's underneath...

Louise: It was an artwork to stimulate thinking around the complexities of the species we've become. It's enigmatic; the equation written on the bottom of the plinth is what happens – the catalyst is sunlight.

Sunlight triggers the breaking apart of different oxides, capturing the particulates and releasing oxygen. But the surface has to be clean to do that. It's meant to have a yearly power wash because algae will build up on it, and stifle its ability... but in a way, that's part of its story.

Nichol: Your work explores ideas around nature, biodiversity, and the worsening climate and earth crises. How did that interest begin?

Matthew: I suppose our first look at climate change was about the melting glaciers in Norway in a sculptural photographic work we made in 2001 called Drift.

Louise: We weren't exactly trying to make work about the climate. We were trying to engage people's curiosity and compassion. If we were campaigning at all, it was to draw attention to the complex things that nature needed and how much our activities were despoiling that. We didn't want to be preachy or finger-pointing, we too were culpable in this activity and felt as lost as everyone else.

Nichol: Given how you try to engage human curiosity and visualise the impact of human activities on nature in your work, can you tell us more about the Lost Wave?

Matthew: We were interested in the condition of habitats. Lost Wave was a multiple of an inflatable beach ball. We took water from outside Dounreay [nuclear power station] and put it inside the ball. At that time, Dounreay was leaking; occasionally, the sand would record radioactive readings. A lot of our work has been about drawing attention to invisible things happening within landscapes and habitats.

Nichol: Your work is often site-specific, such as the Rosnes Benches. How were the benches designed to facilitate experiences in nature?

Louise: Rosnes Benches were made for a group of very engaged clients. We went on walks with them, and it became apparent that the landscape itself was the main attraction. It was so diverse. The area of Dumfries and Galloway is 300 square miles of forest land. There are Site of Special Scientific Interest boglands where the land is quite gelatinous – you can jump on it and see it quivering. And there are very special zones of acidic waterways... just so many interesting landscapes.

Louise: At the time, our children were quite young, and we were aware of how they would crawl about the landscape or just lie down in it. So, the idea was to create these conduits between the landscape and a human being. There are 30 benches in small clusters over 12 locations, and we made a website that gives the GPS location of the benches with information about the offerings each location holds.

Matthew: The benches gave adults permission to lie down in a landscape. There's a raised circle for your head and holes suggestive of hands and heels; the invitation was built in, so people don't feel self-conscious. Sometimes, that's a strategy we use: we create these mediators that permit different behaviours in a landscape.

Nichol: The Nomadic Boulders are another example of your site-specific work. How did you research and develop this public artwork?

Louise: It was quite a tricky commission because John O'Groats, at the time, was really on its knees. We felt kind of angry and embarrassed because it was such a poor reflection of Scotland's most northerly settlement.

Matthew: There was a collection of little shops, half of them were closed and most poorly maintained.

Louise: But on either side of that famous post that says 'John O'Groats', there was an incredible beach that had these strong tides where lots of interesting things would wash up. But tourists would just come, get a photograph next to the post and get back in their cars... There's now a much better offering.

There were loads of things we felt you could tune into, but what we tuned into was the power of the Pentland Firth, where some of the strongest currents in the world have been recorded. Speaking to people locally, they mentioned a nearby beach where the sea had delivered a great quantity of boulders overnight.

Matthew: There were massive waves, some six and ten meters high, big tidal surges and a whirlpool.

Louise: It was a force to be reckoned with. So, our idea was to harness these narratives into a physical object that would monumentalise the power of the sea.

Matthew: The bronze arcs represent the height of the waves. The boulders positioned on the arcs were relocated from the beach they had previously appeared at overnight.

Louise: We are boulders fans and have often sought out some famous boulders that have gotten trapped somewhere or formed in interesting ways. As part of the interpretation for this work, there is a short history of boulder reverence.

Louise: Given how touristy John O'Groats is, we also made a small satellite work, a series of three stitch-on fabric badge souvenirs.

Nichol: You left Dundee and moved to the Isle of Lewis a few years ago. What's that move been like, and what are you working on now?

Louise: There's this idea up here of the Celtic knots, of time repeating itself and revisiting something you've experienced before. In some ways, it feels like when we were living in St Combs. It's a whole new landscape that we are incomers to.

We are not particularly chasing public art projects anymore. Short films are something we've always made and are a good mechanism to make us examine our environment. We are working on a trilogy just now; the first one is out and called Moor. It looks inland to a place that's sparse and hostile but full of beautiful little revelations. We are currently working on Coast and the weird existence in the intertidal zones.

We're having to teach ourselves about what we are looking at. I'd never seen a by-the-wind sailor until we moved here. It's like some kind of science fiction.

The other thing we've been doing is an evolution of our Immersion Clothing works; we're making these wearable artworks, not quite jewellery. We've made two styles of necklaces from the quills of gannet feathers: one represents their 3,000-mile migration to this coastline, the other the ten primary feathers at its wing tip.

We've also made small vessels for ambergris, a waxy substance sperm whales produce. It can be at sea for decades and is a very rare beach find. Once mature, it's got a lovely incense and old wood smell and has been used by perfumers for centuries to emulsify and prolong scents. The current iteration is a perforated wood receptacle that contains the scent. It feels like designing and making sculpture, but of a much smaller form.

Nichol: Your move to the Outer Hebrides started when you built Hona, a small house that anyone can rent, but which you also use to invite other artists to come and explore this landscape in winter. Can you tell us more about how you integrated the surroundings into Hona's design?

Matthew: Hona amplifies what can be discovered in the landscape through the design of the space. There's a large aerial photograph of the area with numbered walks and information on what you might find. There are artworks, films and books that assist people in thinking about and becoming beguiled by this landscape. We see it as an extension of our other interactive works, like Rosnes Benches and Immersion Clothing.

In the winter, we've started doing skill exchanges, where other artists can have Hona for free for a few weeks if they help us with something. We've had two lots so far, and it's been very successful.

Matthew: You could describe it as a sublime landscape. It's very evocative.

Louise: There was something about this area; I think we always felt we'd never be bored here because there are these very contrasting landscapes. There are beautiful beaches, both expansive and tiny, whose sands are 95 per cent shell content, so they are very white, and when the sea washes over them, the light bursts through, and the sea looks turquoise. Inland from us is what would appear to be a very austere moorland, with blankets of bog, which feel bleak at first, but once you get into them, there are all these jewels to discover.

Nichol Keene, writer and curator

This content was funded by the PF Charitable Trust

Further reading – recommended by Matthew and Louise

Richard Louv, The Nature Principle, Algonquin Books, 2012

Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain, Canongate Books Ltd, 2011

Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass, Penguin, 2020