Dundee, U.K.
In summer 2018, the BBC reported large numbers of decomposing deepwater whales washed up along the Scottish and Irish coastline. The deaths were likely caused by sound pollution from shipping and the active sonar used by the military and industries searching for new gas, oil, and mineral reserves. Cuvier’s beaked whales are especially sensitive to mid-range sonar between one and 10 kilohertz, which disrupts their behavior so that they surface too quickly, suffer decompression sickness, and die at sea, their huge carcasses later coming ashore.
When Edinburgh-based environmental activist and artist Mella Shaw heard these reports of cetaceans dying due to sonar activity, she was spurred into action. Her large-scale installation Sounding Line, which raises awareness of the horrifying effects of sonar sound pollution, won the Award prize at the British Ceramics Biennial in 2023 and is currently installed at The McManus in Dundee (through January 18, 2026).
Shaw’s large-scale sculptural forms, which take the whale’s tiny inner-ear bones as their point of reference, are made from a clay body that incorporates whale bone ash, processed much like the cow bones that have been used in bone china for centuries. After finding a whale, already dead and beached, near Loch Long in 2021, Shaw sintered the bone in a ceramic kiln to 1,000 degrees centigrade, then powdered it using a pestle and mortar. A license from Nature Scotland was necessary in order to collect the whale bone, and the associated license number (220784), along with Shaw’s maker’s mark, is stamped on each work. The sculptures are wrapped in red marine ropes resonating with a sonar pulse, and visitors are encouraged to touch them and consider the impact on underwater marine life. Knowing the effect of sonar on whales, it is a sobering experience to grasp the rope and feel the pulsations radiating from hand to arm to body.
Shaw’s sculptural installation is flanked by photographs and a film. Her photographs of what she calls “found sand etchings” invoke the flow of water, the cold chill of the Atlantic, and the decomposing whale carcass, slowly returning to its origins. The film documents her journey to South Uist in the Outer Hebrides, where she brought one unfired sculpture back to the sea. Shaw drags the huge, heavy form along the beach using the same red marine rope that resonates in the gallery. Once it reaches the shoreline, the clay gradually dissolves in the sea water.
Dundee was Britain’s leading whaling port in the second half of the 19th century, so Sounding Line takes on a particular poignancy at The McManus. A Cuvier’s beaked whale skull from the museum collection is shown nearby, notable for its unusual asymmetry. Set within the context of the city’s maritime and whaling history, Sounding Line invites us to think about how human behavior affects our environment. Selections from the museum’s ceramics collection displayed at the threshold of Sounding Line add additional nuance and cultural context. In this way, the dialogue between the contemporary and the historic is enlivened, shedding new light on old stories and drawing connections across time. It is a conversation worth being part of as we think about actions and their consequences.