The choice of The McManus in Dundee as the venue to host artist and environmental activist Mella Shaw’s award-winning installation Sounding Line is fitting. Here, the city’s past as a major 19th-century whaling port fuses with Shaw’s bid to raise awareness of the devastating effect marine sonar can have on deep-diving whale species that use sound to navigate underwater.

Sonar is used to explore the ocean through sound waves. Utilised in industries such as shipping, oil and gas, as well as by the military, it can cause major disruption for whales that use echolocation to move around safely, resulting in them being disorientated or stranded. This body of work is Shaw’s response to a devastating mass beaching which killed nearly 100 whales across the Hebrides and west coast of Scotland and Ireland in 2018.

Divided into two spaces, her small but powerful exhibition has an interactive element, with visitors invited to touch parts of the display in order to experience the effects of sonar for themselves. In the first space, six large, white sculptural forms are bound by vibrant red marine ropes, suspended from above. These are the sounding lines of the title: navigational instruments used to determine the depth of water beneath a vessel. Gallery-goers can hold on to these ropes and, if you give it a little time, you begin to feel vibrations as sound waves pulse through them. Some are barely distinguishable, while others rumble fiercely in your grasp.

Shaw’s sculptures are based on the shape of whales’ tiny inner-ear bones, which are essential for their ability to echolocate. Each work is made from a unique clay body containing whalebone ash. With permission from NatureScot, she used the remains of a northern bottlenose whale that became beached on the west coast of Scotland in 2021.

In the same room is a series of photographic prints taken on South Uist in the Outer Hebrides. Next door is the skull of a Cuvier’s beaked whale from the museum’s own collection, along with a six-minute film made by Shaw. In it, she wraps red rope round one of her unfired sculptural forms and slowly drags it across the beautiful white sands of An Doirlinn beach. Drawing a physical and metaphorical line in the sand as the drone camera rises upwards, the sculpture is submerged in a shallow part of the water, slowly broken apart by waves. A time-lapse shows its disintegration.

Sounding Line won the highest award for ceramics in the UK at the British Ceramics Biennial in 2023. It is perfectly placed within the context of The McManus which tells the story of Dundee’s whaling past in its permanent displays as well as housing the 40-foot skeleton of the famous Tay Whale, an ill-fated humpback that swam into the Firth Of Tay during the winter of 1883.

Mella Shaw: Sounding Line, The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum, until Sunday 18 January; main picture: Jenny Harper.