Island beaching inspires artist to explore enduring fascination
Off Scotland’s coasts, sonar signals, echoing back and forth, are vital navigational tools for two giants beneath the waves, whales and submarines.
While military activity bounces sonar around on exercise drills, whales and dolphins use echolocation for their own communication, navigation and hunting. The delicate balance between the two and research into whether the presence of military sonar has played a part in mass strandings of whales in recent years has sparked a new multimedia exhibition.
The project, created by Iona-based artist Mhairi Killin, was inspired by a “unique mortality event” in 2018 that led to around 120 whales washing up dead on Atlantic shores, with over 45 in the Hebrides alone. One Cuvier’s Beaked whale, which would become known locally as the “north end whale”, washed up on Iona.
“News travelled fast,” Killin recalled. “There was a buzz on the island and the same would’ve happened historically but for different reasons. Back then, a whale body coming ashore would’ve been a source of bounty for islanders, for food, oil and bone. This time, as more and more of the skeleton was exposed, parts of it started to go missing. It wasn’t the sea that was reclaiming them, it was islanders, clearly not for the reasons before, but more
I think just because of a connection, a need to have something of this amazing creature closer to them. I was intrigued by that, why we as humans felt such fascination to the extent that we wanted to claim parts of its body and why it had come ashore in the first place.”
On Sonorous Seas, on display at Mull’s An Tobar from next month, mixes whale bone sculpture, video, poetry and soundscape into an immersive sensory experience.
The Ministry of Defence confirmed in 2021 that it had been operating in the area of the 2018 strandings, saying it acknowledged the risks to marine life and had taken precautions before and during sonar operations to minimise them.
During the Joint Warrior exercise off the Scottish coast last May, which saw ships, aircraft and troops from the UK and 13 other nations take part in war drills, Killin joined the Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust for an 11-day expedition.
She collected recordings of orca calls, dolphin clicks, boat engines and magnified sonar on the research boat Silurian alongside scientist Becky Dudley.
They’ve been transformed into a soundscape by composer Fergus Hall, while Dutch-born and Mull-based poet and artist Miek Zwamborn has written a new poem
as an elegy for the whales. The exhibition will also feature sculptures made from the remains of a whale washed up at Bragar on the Isle of Lewis in 2018.