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 that autumn 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 new collaborative exhibition, which opens on the Isle of Mull this summer.
