Tern show is not just for the birds

THE timing was exactly right. It was meant to be so, Yulia Kovanova tells me. As the first Arctic terns passed on their annual migration by the island of Mull in March, her exhibition, which had its roots in some decoys she had once made to attract terns to breed on Scottish shores, opened its doors at Mull’s arts venue, An Tobar.

The opening went well, despite talk of the virus and fears of lockdown, says Kovanova. “I thought nobody would come,” she says, “but they all came! There is a wonderful island community on Mull.”

And then two days later, the doors closed, prematurely, as they did around Scotland. The terns were still migrating, passing through on cool winds, passing on, untouched.

But humans, far below, were confined by an equally invisible force eddying through remote villages and urban housing estates, the only migration a round-circle of daily exercise and hurried trips to the shop.

Kovanova laughs. The terns have gone now, she says, and the exhibition has reopened. It won’t have the immediacy she and Mike Darling, curator at An Tobar, had so meticulously planned, but this evocative installation, with a soundscape by Lars Koens, still resonates.

Colony is a three-part installation, part of a larger body of work which has been curated to fit in An Tobar’s lofty gallery space. Begun in 2015, it was an offshoot of work which Kovanova, an artist from Siberia who came to live in Scotland 16 years ago – a migration not quite as lengthy as the Arctic terns own famed Arctic to Antarctic annual jaunt, but impressive nonetheless – began after being asked to work with scientists to create some visually realistic tern sculptures for the RSPB that were to act as decoys in attracting terns to a safe breeding space.

“When I started researching and working with them, as an artist you get inspired by such different areas...I read that sometimes, it doesn’t matter if the decoy looks like the bird, because they react to colour and patterns, and so I started working on the side with colours and patterns and shapes, all in the right proportions, but not looking how the real birds look. And that’s how this body of work came about.”

In the gallery, Colony hangs from the tall rafters of the former school room that is now An Tobar’s visual arts space, circles of grey and white and red, the size of a tern with wings extended, “flying” at different heights. “They are fascinating birds.

“They have the longest migration of any bird or animal, and I was very interested to think about migration through this work, thinking about how we migrate as humans, how birds migrate over all our human borders, about my own journey and the things associated with these migrations.”

Koens’ sound installation responds to Kovanova’s work, playing with the five elements that make up each sculptural piece.

“They are not an illustration, but a response,” she says.

The second work is Lifespan, an

Yulia Kovanova worked with scientists to create tern sculptures for the RSPB that were to act as decoys in attracting the birds to safe breeding grounds