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Tonya McMullan situates her work amidst communities using long-term engagement to make context-specific, process-based, participatory and perfo rmative installations that foreground ecological concerns. McMullan has immersed herself in the world of insects for several years: ongoing projects with beekeeping, urban agri- culture and pollinators have developed into explorations of our sensory and extra-sensory connections. 

Past projects include The Lure of Tomorrow’s Harvests (2020), an installation commissioned by Talbot Rice Gallery comprising an archive of Edinburgh honey collected during lockdown, and There is something in the æther (2021), a scent and hand sanitiser created for TULCA festival in Galway to encourage people to recollect smell memories and consider our relationship with the environment past present and future. 

Commissioned Works & Events:

Exhibition
Crude Floral, Art Walk Porty Hub, September 2022 (scent, card, seamix)
Salt Works Group exhibition, mote102 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh, March 2023 (tomato plants, compost, found tarpaulin and fur coat, drawings, photographs, scent)

Workshops
Ecological Explorations at Seafield, November 2022
Beginning with a talk by Lyle Boyle, Seagrass Officer from The Ecology Centre, and Leonie Alexander, Ecologist from the Edinburgh Shoreline project, this session involved the creation of paintings based on smell and local ecology

Painting with Synthetic Seawater Workshop, September 2022
McMullan shares her research into synthetic sea water in this workshop, which is used by scientists to simulate the theoretical content of natural sea water in lab environments. Participants create a batch of synthetic sea water and use it to produce watercolour paintings of the Firth of Forth. 

Seafield Scent Identifying Workshop, September 2022
McMullan leads a small group walk to discuss the scents that can be detected in the air, land and sea, and begin to make scent diaries. The group will then work together in a makeshift beach laboratory, combining synthetic seawater and other materials to create a new scent.  

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

The Smellscape of the Seascape on Tonya McMullan by Jan Prichard – available to read on MAP

All photos Ellie J McMaster

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ENDLESS/BELLY suggests an excavation of Scotland’s role in shaping the Black Atlantic, while considering the experiences of being Black in Scotland in the past, present and future. The project sees the development of three new live art micro commissions by Edinburgh-based artists Tanatsei Gambura, Khadea Santi and Lisa Williams. 

Ruwona has also conceived a programme of six films by Black artists making work about water and is sharing new writing.

This programme forms Art Walk Porty’s first curatorial residency and is supported additionally by funding from City of Edinburgh’s Council Diversity & Inclusion Fund, and The William Syson Foundation. 

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Portobello Prom 2022 – Image: Ellie J McMaster

ABOUT EACH PROJECT:

Salt Wounds
Artist Khadea Santi presents Salt Wounds as both a remembering and healing work. The event incorporates salt mined from Lake Retba, Dakar, a peninsula in Senegal and the westernmost point of Africa. This salt holds histories of no return, the Transatlantic slave trade, colonisation and Black Ecologies. 

Simultaneously a performance, workshop and ceremony bringing together fire, ceramic, salt and writing, Salt Wound invites participants to use tinfoil to encase ceramic pieces in salt, then to unearth them from the ashes transformed into a myriad of different patterns and colours. The work also speaks on pyromancy (meaning divination by means of fire) and water as a place for cleansing and mourning.

Twisted Dream
Lisa Williams’ Twisted Dream is a poetic pilgrimage that prompts participants to take their minds back to Portobello in 1863. Enslavement in the Caribbean has ended 30 years previously, and Elizabeth Baillie McIntosh wakes from a feverish dream. The Scottish widow of a plantation owner in the tiny island of Carriacou, Elizabeth is now living a life of piety in Portobello. She becomes obsessed by the nightly visions of the cribo, a snake she had killed on the plantation, and begins to walk in her sleep. 

Drawing on personal family connections and wider historical entwinings, the poems explore our own capacity for self and collective healing. Williams invites participants to join in a poetic pilgrimage around Portobello together.

When We Come Out of the Water
Tanatsei Gambura’s When We Come Out of the Water bears witness to the fatal encounter of Black bodies with bodies of water in the wake of colonial and imperialist violence. From trans-Atlantic slavery routes to refugee migration channels on the Mediterranean, labour under modern capitalism continues to inter Black people within marine ecologies. 

Gambura is inviting people to bring fresh flowers to the steps of Portobello bandstand for a two-day vigil in honour of Black lives lost at sea. Constructed as an ‘organic memorial’ using funereal flora and the built structures on Portobello Promenade, this is an opportunity for communal grieving through the death practices indigenous to Black communities: ceremony and ritual. It acknowledges that Black and indigenous people will continue to be the worst affected by the climate emergency. 

When We Come Out of the Water Tanatsei Gambura, Joppa Steps 2022 – Image: Jon Davey

Commissioned Works & Live Art:

Exhibition
SALT Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, Art Walk Hub & Portobello Promenade 2022
Salt Works Natasha Thembiso Ruwona, mote102, 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh 2023

Live Art 2022
Twisted Dreams: a poetic pilgrimage
Lisa Williams, founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association, guides a performative walk through Portobello, exploring connections between Scotland and the Caribbean.

Salt Wounds
Khadea Santi leads a performance, workshop and ceremony bringing together fire, ceramic, salt and writing, including salt clay firing and durational performance on Portobello Beach.

When We Come Out of the Water
Tanatsei Gambura invites people to come together, bringing flesh flowers in honour of Black lives lost at sea, Steps by Joppa Bandstand.

Film programme
curated by Natasha Thembiso Ruwona: Tabita Rezaire, Akosua Adoma Owusu, Tulani Hlalo, Wanuri Kahiu, Zebib K. Abraham, Deborah Jack
Portobello Promenade, by Pipe Street

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

A trio of texts by Harvey Dimond, unravels real and imagined oceanic journeys in South Africa, Scotland and Barbados:
I. Nobody Dies of Old Age in the Ocean on Tanatsei Gambura
II. Maps on Khadea Santi
III. Pray for a Life Without a Plot on Lisa Williams

Available to read on MAP

Twisted Dreams: a poetic pilgrimage Lisa Williams, Portobello 2022 – Image: Ellie J McMaster

About the artists:

Natasha Thembiso Ruwona is a Scottish- Zimbabwean artist, researcher, and creative programmer. They are interested in how Afrofuturism and ecology can meet through storytelling and by listening to the landscape. Using water as a site for thinking, Natasha investigates entwinements of Scottish history and Black Geographies via their transatlantic connections. Through their investigations, they are also seeking to understand how healing and improved wellbeing are impacted when we explore our relationships with our environment.

Tanatsei Gambura is a poet and artist who connects lived experience, geographies and memories to create multimedia works of exchange. Tanatsei’s commission considers water as a space of birth, life and death, and proposes communal grieving as a method for healing.

Through collaborative approaches to making, Khadea Santi uses workshops, clay, sound, performance and film within her practice. For her commission, Khadea continues to use elements of collaboration as a method for making through conversation, fire and clay.

Lisa Williams is the founder of the Edinburgh Caribbean Association where she runs educational, artistic and heritage projects. Lisa’s work for Art Walk Projects expands on her Black History Walking tours and research into Scotland’s relationship with the Caribbean, this time using contemporary art to tell these stories.

Salt Wounds Khadea Santi, Portobello Beach 2022 – Image: Natasha Thembiso Ruwona

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Le May is leading a series of participatory tasting sessions, discussion events and workshops, underpinned by collaboration with local community groups as well as by the artist’s research into modern salt-production technologies and historic salt industries, including at Portobello, Joppa and Prestonpans. Each event aims to celebrate and interrogate the emotional resonance of food and invites participants to explore how flavour informs and is informed by culture, history and the environment. 

Le May’s work will culminate in a series of published recipes, including insights and local stories.

Mahala Le May is a Scottish artist, maker and baker who uses food as a tangible medium to ignite conversation, encouraging individuals and communities to question the complex- ities of contemporary food systems. Through conversations and collabo- rations with farmers, crop breeders, soil scientists and others, Le May is interested in thinking through how her work as a baker can support labour and land rights, soil health, biodiversity and seed sovereignty. 

Le May’s practice privileges process over outcome and participation over production. She uses historical research as a way to question established customs. 

Recent projects include field-to-loaf workshops on an organic farm and a wholegrain biscuit jamboree for participants to share food, skills and stories. Le May is currently researching local grain economies and their significance for both baking and weaving.

Site of Joppa Salt Pans

Commissioned Works & Events:

Exhibition
SALT Group Exhibition, Art Walk Hub, September 2022
Salt Works, mote102, 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh, March 2023

Events 2022
Salty snacks for Art Walk preview exploring salt and filtered sea water

Salt tasting sessions 
Site of Joppa Pans

Art, Food, Communities, Climate Justice
Le May leads an online discussion with Shona Cameron (CLIMAVORE project with Cooking Sections, Isle of Skye) and Rowan Lear (Glasgow Seed Library). 
Online discussion

Salt tasting & fermentation
Flavour and local food systems are at the centre of this artist-led afternoon of tastings and discussion 

Community engagement events
with Portobello Community Fridge and Craigmillar Pantry working with Grass Roots Remedies

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

Tomatoes at Lunch Time with Salt a Line of Salt on Top on Mahala Le May by Glasgow food writer Sean Wai Keung – available to read on MAP

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Joanne Matthews (centre) with other SALT residency artists, Mahala Le May (left), Natasha Thembiso Ruwona (right)
Image: Ellie J McMaster

Commissioned Works:

Exhibition
Assorted Kipple Art Walk Hub 2022 and site of Old Joppa Saltpans (alongside performance/reading) – photographed below

at first, and then 15:00 video and sound installation, mote102 102 Ferry Road Edinburgh March 2023

Set in a speculative salty world, at first, and then is a collage of photographs, moving image and sound. Part of Matthews’ 2022 residency with Art Walk Projects, the film takes place in an over-salinated Portobello. Through a queer lens and with nods to 1960s French new wave cinema, the work layers a 35-voice choir with crawling digital sounds, harking to past science fictions projecting into the future. Production and editing assistance from Kathryn Cutler-Mackenzie.

Writing commissioned in partnership with MAP Magazine, published in SALT journal published by Art Walk Press 2023:

We Will All Be Marine Mammals Soon on Joanne Matthews by Rowan Lear – available to read on MAP

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