Mull hosts Scotland’s newest arts festival

Musician Hannah Catherine Jones, aka Foxy Moron. Peruvian poet Daniella Valz Gen.

Scotland’s newest arts festival sees the Isle of Mull host a weekend of radical work, featuring performance, music, art, sound installation and fi lm screenings.

Daughter of Cups in the North features performance, music, art, sound installation, dance and new writing. Curated by artist Bobbi Cameron, the festival takes over An Tobar Gallery and Mull Theatre from April 29 to May 1.

Artists include awardwinning choreographer Mele Broomes, Glasgow-based musician Quinie, Peruvian artist and writer Daniella Valz Gen, London-based artist, musician, multiinstrumentalist Hannah Catherine Jones - aka Foxy Moron - and international DJ, artist and cultural curator Sarra Wild.

A moving image programme will also screen works by 2021 Turner Prize nominee Evan Ifekoya, 2021 Jarman Award shortlisted artist Sophia Al Maria, British Art Show 9 featured artist Grace Ndiritu and internationally acclaimed artist Linda Stupart.

The festival’s invited artists are all working with and expanding on themes of ancestry, pushing the boundaries of what it means to inhabit space, connecting with spirits and breaking down barriers between worlds. Taking its title from the Tarot card of the same name, Daughter of Cups in the North speaks of creativity, new possibilities, ancestry and psychic intuition.

Developed as part of artist Bobbi Cameron’s residency at An Tobar, the festival will include a new sound installation by the artist entitled Without Time, Without Distance, Without Mind.

Exploring spirituality and ancestry through working with reiki energy, Cameron has created a method of opening up passages to the future as well as caring for moments of the past.

The sound is a collage of originally composed solfeggio frequencies, archival sound and meditative guidance, a soundscape that travels and shifts throughout the gallery in its own temporal architecture. Painted fabrics hang within the space which hold and guide the sound.

Mele Broomes will premiere a live performance of her digital work Wrapped Up in This which was fi rst shown as part of the Take Me Somewhere Festival 2021. Wrapped Up in This explores a journey of rebirth, of connecting with Broomes’ ancestry to ask the question is this who you want me to be?

Peruvian poet, artist and card reader Daniella Valz Gen

will showcase a series of material compositions derived from contemplations of inner and outer landscapes. Daniella’s work explores the spaces between languages, cultures and value systems with an emphasis on embodiment and ritual,

through the “mediums of performance, installation, conversation and text. As part of An Tobar Festival, Daniella will also run workshops exploring oracular practice and divination connected to the land.

Glasgow-based musician Quinie sings in old scots in the style of the Scottish traveller communities that she is connected to. Her style is inspired by the traditions of Scottish traveller singers Lizzie Higgins, 1929-1993, and her mother Jeannie Robertson, 1908-1975. Collaging together source material, she amalgamates sean nos style melodies, children’s rhyme, story poems and snippets of more traditional tunes to create a bleak and extended blur of narratives rooted in an imagined Scotland.

The festival’s invited artists are all working with and expanding on themes of ancestry, pushing the boundaries of what it means to inhabit space, connecting with spirits and breaking down barriers between worlds.

London-based artist, musician, multiinstrumentalist Hannah Catherine Jones’ performance turns to celestial bodies that subvert colonial rule, Owed to Humana is mapping an escape from the all-consuming event horizon of whiteness to imagine an otherwise – an otherwise where there are new myths for the cosmos, new ways of relating with the world, and new paths to liberation.

Owed to Humana is the latest iteration in Jones’ ongoing body of work. The Oweds are a temporal form of self-reparation, a method of connection with ancestry through sonic ritual, using combinations of voice, theremin, stringed instruments and visuals which are sometimes orchestrated though predominantly improvised.

Speaking ahead of the festival artist Bobbi Cameron said: ‘This festival has been launched and grown out of my residency with An Tobar Gallery. Coming out of the pandemic, I wanted to invite other artists to share this space and this platform with me. Artists who inspire and challenge my

art practice, whose work has had the power to move me and to haunt me in the most brilliant ways. ‘The festival presents artworks in the forms of fi lms, sound installations, sculptures, music, performance and dance. There are works that offer We’re delighted you the space to listen to support Bobbi deeply. There are movement Cameron’s vision for the An Tobar works that explore journeys of rebirth. There are sounds that offer spaces of healing, Festival sculptures that offer spaces of grounding and songs that open channels to Scottish ancestry. ‘Across all of the works there are environments that encourage your spirit to travel, to open, to discover the unknown. This programme seeks to provide an offering for audiences who interact with it, a platform from which they can travel to explore their own sites of openness and discovery.’ Artistic Director of An Tobar and Mull Theatre Rebecca Atkinson-Lord said: ‘We’re delighted to support Bobbi Cameron’s vision for the An Tobar Festival. We’re excited to host such a diverse programme of artists for what promises to be one of the cultural highlights The weekend festival is curated not just in by artist Bobbi Cameron, left, and Mull but the has been developed through her residency at An Tobar which has also wider Scottish resulted in a new sound installation festival at the gallery entitled Without Time, calendar.’ Without Distance, Without Mind.