Like very many of us, as a person alive today – and a mother – I feel a sense of impending dread. I live with increasing fear, apprehension and dismay at the unfolding climate catastrophe. I struggle to answer my seven-year-old’s questions about extreme weather events and the state of nature on our planet for fear of giving him nightmares. As a citizen of an affluent country in the Global North I feel responsible, and know I have an increased duty to call our politicians to account. I sign the petitions. I attend demonstrations. I stopped flying. I ride a bike. I changed to a green energy supplier. I worry – a lot. And this summer I peacefully marched to the point of arrest calling for an end to new fossil fuel licences. I spent a night in a police cell and experienced the momentary peace of mind that comes from knowing I am playing a small part in trying to hold our Westminster government to account. I need to know I am doing what I can – while there is still time.

We each must do what we can. And that mantra has led me to put the environment front and centre in my creative practice too. Since retraining in 2013 at the Royal College of Art in my mid-thirties, I have made art and curated exhibitions freelance for a living. Over the ten years since then, a time of dramatically increasing climate catastrophe, my practice has become a form of activism in itself – a way to grapple with the environmental challenges we face, and to harness the ability of art and design to present alternative solutions and to galvanise individuals to take action. Ceramics, my chosen material, has a particular ability to speak to the phenomenon of change, having at its core a permanent shift from raw clay to fired ceramics. I use it to make work that is intentionally thought-provoking and consciousness-raising. Issues vary but the motifs reoccur: themes of balance, tipping-points and fragility. We are in a dire state of multiple and overlapping environmental tipping-points, unimaginable to any previous generation.

This drive has led me to my current project, Sounding Line. The story of this project goes back five years to Autumn 2018, when over 100 whales washed up dead over a three-week period all along the west coast of Scotland, the Hebrides, Ireland, the Faroes and Iceland. These were all beaked whales; the deepest-diving whale species on the planet. It was a devastating mass mortality – and represented the largest ever recorded mass beaching of beaked whales. Despite this, very few people in Britain even heard about it.

Installation view of Sounding Line by Mella Shaw PIC: Jenny Harper

Over the intervening years scientists from the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme have proven the role that exposure to sound and sonar pollution had in these deaths. Industrial shipping as well as active sonar used by the military and for seismic mapping for oil, gas and minerals, are polluting the sea with a cacophony of sound. Beaked whales are particularly vulnerable as they hunt at extreme depths – the sound and sonar pollution is making these majestic animals panic and come to the surface too quickly, resulting in decompression sickness – “the bends” – and ultimately death.

I chose to name my project Sounding Line as this is the term given for a rope that is dropped from a boat to measure the depth to the seabed. With funding from Creative Edinburgh and Creative Informatics I took the dry statistical data from scientists that proved this link and morphed it into the physical stuff of art. Covid-19 caused long delays, but eventually I was given permission from NatureScot to collect some bones from a beached northern bottlenose whale. In much the same way that bone china is made from cow bone I made a clay that incorporates whale bone.

I used this unique clay to hand-build very large forms that reference tiny whale inner-ear bones. The real inner-ear bones are only one to two centimetres long but the forms I made are over a metre in length. I then wrapped these ceramic sculptures in red marine rope which, through a collaboration with artist Theodore Koterwas, resonates with a sonorous pulse taken from actual sonar and ship recordings. Visitors cannot hear the sound but are encouraged to touch the ropes, thereby feeling the vibration travel through their bodies. The result is an immersive artwork that reflects the lived experience of the whales themselves. I also kept one of the sculptures unfired, took this back to An Doirlinn beach on South Uist and ceremonially returned it to the sea where it slowly dissolved. A silent film of this action is shown as part of the exhibition.

Sounding Line is a story about the effect of human-made sound and sonar pollution but it is also one that speaks to the wider issue of climate and ecological breakdown. Whales have beached for millennia, of course, but right now they are under unprecedented pressures; they are part of complex ecosystems that are failing. Rising sea temperature causes migration into new habitats and consequently a disruption of mating and feeding patterns. They are massively affected by plastic pollution, ghost ropes and dwindling food reserves. Making this work I am reminded of how the image of a beached whale was used in 17th century Dutch etchings to signify impending disaster. The form of a whale, lying prone on the sand, so majestic in water and so completely out of place on land, was used by artists at the time as an image of the reversal of God’s order. The otherness of it spoke of impending doom. What more apposite an image is there in these times of ecological and climate catastrophe? I hope this work will raise awareness, challenge apathy and galvanise visitors to call for change.

Mella Shaw is an ceramic artist and activist based in Edinburgh. Sounding Line runs from 1 December to 25 February at Summerhall, Edinburgh, as part of FORM – a season of exhibitions by contemporary female sculptors.

Artist and activist Mella Shaw on her new exhibition at Summerhall: 'I hope this work will raise awareness'