Whale tales

Working with marine scientists, the military and other artists, Mhairi Killin has assembled an exhibition exploring the links between sound, people and the biggest creatures on the planet

- Patrick Barkham

When a dead whale washed ashore on the Hebridean island of Iona in the summer of 2018, artist Mhairi Killin was as intrigued as many other islanders. "It's a beauty spot and people walk there regularly - it wasn't long before there was a bit of a buzz around the island that there was a whale," she says. "That's been the same since prehistory when a whale ashore would be a source of food and oil and bone for artefacts."

Why the whale had died was a mystery, which deepened when it was revealed to be one of more than 100 carcasses of mostly Cuvier's beaked whales found on the west coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Scientists began investigating if military sonar could be responsible, giving Killin the subject for a collaborative exhibition, open to visitors on the Isle of Mull this summer.

On Sonorous Seas uses whale bones, sound recordings, video, poetry and objects derived from the stranded whales to examine the clash between our veneration for these enigmatic mammals and the way we increasingly fill oceans with noise - sonar in particular.