Lectures, exhibitions & events.

Frequently we present our vision on the interweaving of art, literature, research and nature preservation. We initiate exhibitions, lectures, workshops, concerts and guided tours around Knockvologan. Throughout the year we lecture at Art Academies, Universities and perform at various other institutes and festivals. If you are interested in inviting us for a lecture, a brainstorm, a workshop or you wish to discuss the possibilities, then feel free to contact us.

2025

05.07.2025
Iona Lane - album launch
KNOCKvologan Barn

We are looking forward to hear Swilkie, the new album from Highlands-based songwriter Iona Lane, who weaves ecology, conservation, islands and folklore into poetic songs and contemplative melodies. Written during three residencies on the Isle of Eigg, Isle of Mull and Sanday in Orkney, sense of place and landscape are at the core of these songs. From basking sharks to lighthouses, lichen to vanishing islands, curlews to tree planting; the album was recorded in a boathouse on the West Coast of Scotland and the eager listener may even hear the lapping sound of the tide murmuring through the album. Iona’s connection to places by the sea is translated through these songs with evolving vocal melodies, subtle guitar and droning shruti box. 

“Lyrics and musical arrangements crackle with wide-eyed curiosity.” - Jude Rogers, The Guardian

“A real talent!” - Mark Radcliffe, BBC Radio 2 Folk Show 

"Iona feels like a kindred spirit with her gorgeous evocations of landscape and geeky scientific references." - Karine Polwart

“An ethereal voice, poetic phrase and storytelling” - BBC Countryfile Magazine

06.07.2025
Arandora Star Commemoration
Knockvologan Beach

Join us at our yearly poetry gathering around the remains of one of the lifeboats of the Arandora Star, which was en route to Canada on Tuesday 2nd July 1940 and got torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by a German submarine. The luxury liner, turned troopship, had been equipped with some armaments and painted in battleship grey. It was adopting the zig-zag course typical of a warship, reducing its vulnerability to torpedo fire. On board were an estimated 1,615 men: Jewish refugees, Austrian, German, and Italian internees and prisoners of war as well as British military guards and crew. Just over half of those on the ship survived the sinking. A few days later one of the Arandora Star’s fourteen lifeboats came ashore at Knockvologan beach on the Isle of Mull. It is still there buried in the sand.


31.05.2025
The Seaweed Gatherings II - A twilight procession and bonfire at Ardalanish 
Ardalanish Beach

This workshop will focus on the potential for seaweed to act as a cultural resource beyond its economic value for the communities in which it is found: as a kind of ‘totem’ that can help to develop an enhanced sense of identity, understanding and aspiration. The event will take the form of a procession down to the beach at Ardalanish and will be open to all to participate. The procession will involve elements of performance and ceremony that attempt to create a sense of ritual focusing on seaweed. This will include communal singing, movement and dance, and will culminate in a ceremonial cutting of seaweed at low tide. The ritual will draw on the idea of the seaweed and the ‘knowledge’ it contains and represents as a kind of oracle that can be consulted to gain useful wisdom.

This bespoke ritual is in part inspired by the annual seaweed harvest festival at the Mekari shrine in Kyushu, Japan when the priests descend into the water at the lunar new year to harvest the first seaweed of the year before offering it to the local kami/deities. 


03.05.2025
Hebridean Healers
Creich Hall | Fionnphort

The four authors of Hebridean Healers warmly invite you to an illustrated presentation when they will share with you some of the fascinating things they have discovered about the lives of the Beaton physicians of Pennycross; their history, their garden, the plants they used and their manuscripts. 

05.04.2025
When Animals Speak - Eva Meijer
KNOCKvologan Yard 

Drawing on insights from their own close relationships with animals, science, philosophy, and politics, Eva Meijer provides fascinating, real-world examples of animal communities who use their voices to speak, and act. In their talk When Animals Speak they encourage us to rethink our relations with other animals, showing that their voices should be taken into account as the starting point for a new interspecies democracy.

In their latest book Multispecies Dialogues Eva Meijer develops a new understanding of the concept ‘dialogue’, which includes embodied, material and spatial interaction. Meijer does not do this alone: each chapter of the book is devoted to a dialogue, or set of dialogues – with street dog Olli, a community of former lab mice, amphibian neighbours, the North Sea, and many other beings. Taking multispecies dialogues seriously is a way to do justice to more-than-human agency and to become more worldly in a time dominated by humans. Rethinking the model of the dialogue also opens up new ways of doing philosophy in multispecies world, which is urgently needed to address the ecological, political and philosophical problems of our time.

Eva Meijer is a Dutch philosopher, visual artist, writer and singer-songwriter. They write novels, philosophical essays, academic texts, poems and columns, and their work has been translated into over twenty languages. Recurring themes are language (including silence), madness, nonhuman animals, and politics.

Eva and Miek exploring one of the pools along the peat dams in Tireragan


18.01.2025
Fermenting Tales
KNOCKvologan Barn

We warmly invite you to join us for a shared lunch and recipe exchange on Saturday January 18th from 11:00 AM – 2:00 PM at KNOCKvologan Studio.
We hope to kick off a Ferment Club and invite anyone passionate or curious about pickling, fermenting, or preserving. Bring along your favourite creations—whether it’s chutney, kimchi, sauerkraut, kefir, bread, or any other preserved delight—and share your stories, techniques, and tips. Together, we’ll taste, talk, and explore how these time-honoured practices connect us to both tradition and sustainable futures.

2024

16.11.2024
A way in
St Luke’s, London

Time passes, leaving footprints behind her. Roots twist and deepen, leaves unfurl, turn orange, fall, and decay, tents are pitched and unpitched, the tide changes. 

Rufus Isabel Elliot’s new work for piano trio imagining the wavering songs that belong intrinsically to a bivvy place amongst the cliffs of Tireragan – songs that transform a place in the wild into a sleeping place. Featuring visuals by KNOCKvologan Studio, it hopes to bring that place alive in the hall of LSO St Luke’s.

The première of the music and video is on November 16th performed by the London Symphony Orchestra in St Luke’s.

28.09.2025
Poets at the barn

On 28th September we had the honour to host two exceptional guests: Alison Phipps (UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration) and Tawona Sithole (Writer in Residence at the University of Glasgow). They shared their insights with warmth and humor, supported by the Ross of Mull Poets.

The Barn at Knockvologan was full, with folk from the Ross of Mull, Erraid - and even Tobermory - and expectancy in the air. Rutger and Miek welcomed several Ross of Mull Poets and special guests from Glasgow: Alison Phipps and Tawona Sithole. Alison is Professor of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the School of Education at Glasgow University and holds the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts. Tawona is a storyteller and musician  and currently Artist in Residence at the University. Together they have produced a book of poetry The warriors who do not fight (Wild Goose Publications), and they read from that and other work in progress, with a lively commentary and a little music - I’ll come to that.

This evening was part of the ‘Fionnphort Fringe’ to a full week at the Abbey in Iona, with other writers, some of whom read at an event on that other island on Sunday afternoon, where Alison and Tawona were joined by Kathy Galloway.

On the Ross, meanwhile, it was a privilege for Ross of Mull poets + 1 ( Juliet Antill from Tobermory) to be the support act, bringing their usual diversity of styles, poignant, perceptive and down-to-earth. Brian Thomas performed his signature headstand - which didn’t seem at all out-of-place.

The poetry and commentary from Alison and Tawona were moving, challenging too, about people on the move, encounters across cultures, stories of war (including raw reflection on Gaza) - all drawn to a beautiful close by a sequence read by Alison while Tawona played gentle cadences on an African thumb-piano (proper name?). After enthusiastic applause, conversations continued as folk spilled out of the barn into the darkness - and fell silent under a sky amazed by stars.

Jan S Pickard

29.08.2024 - 01.09.2024 following the tide
Verstrengeld
Into the Great Wide Open festival
Vlieland | The Netherlands
a multi voiced exhibition with Wouter Engelbart, ellen schoenmakers, Johanna Weggelaar, Herman van den Muijsenberg en Miek Zwamborn

photo Carmen Molenaar

16.05.2024 | 15-18 CET
New Rituals for the Multispecies Community                        
Symposium, University of Amsterdam, online

Ike Kamphof: Shapes of a Multispecies Lifeworld. Engaging with Amphibian Migrations
Eva Meijer: Organising Dog Dinners with Dogs
Miek Zwamborn: Tidal Genesis. Honouring Seaweed by Coastal Communities

Animals and plants are not things but active agents who have their own interests, desires and projects in life. Their voices, agency and expressions have long been silenced by humans, and human ideas about them are often shaped by prejudice and ignorance. Moving beyond anthropocentrism in culture and politics therefore requires not only critique of existing power relations, but also new ways of engaging with nonhuman agents. Finding new forms of communication and building relations also matters with regard to taking seriously the voices of human children and youth, and adult humans who express themselves in ways that differ from the norm. In these online workshops we explore the role of rituals in working towards new, more just and caring multispecies forms of community. Rituals often center embodied acts, instead of rational forms of human speech. They are also often habitual, and involve using the imagination. For these and other reasons, rituals well suited to acknowledge and include the agency and subjectivity of nonhumans, human children, and certain neurodiverse humans. In the workshop we focus both on the creation of new rituals and reinterpreting existing rituals, from the perspective of art, activism, philosophy and theatre.


3.05.2024 | 15:00 - 19:30
The Trembling Museum
Kelvin Hall | 1445 Argyle Street | Glasgow | G3 8AW

The Trembling Museum, co-curated with filmmaker and Professor Manthia Diawara and art historian and curator Dr Terri Geis, explores new relations between the African art objects in the Hunterian collection and contemporary art. This event invites contemporary practitioners to offer a range of new perspectives on the exhibition, and on the ideas of Martinican poet-thinker Édouard Glissant which are central to it. Glissant's concepts of 'relation', 'opacity' and 'trembling', developed through his own diasporic perspective on the modern world, have been influential in many contexts and across many forms of creative work. In this event, artists, poets, theatre-makers and creative writers will take The Trembling Museum as a point of departure for presentations, dialogues and new creative responses.

Contributors include: Tawona Sithole, Graham Eatough & Miek Zwamborn; Leo Robinson; Vanessa Onwuemezi and Jelena Sofronijevic .


THIS IS ENOUGH.
We are taking part in This is Enough, an ongoing project curated by Nina Pope and Karen Guthry. This project explores the natural abundance and biodiversity of Aros Walled Garden in Tobermory through mindful observation and gentle intervention.

photo Rutger Emmelkamp

23.03.2024 | 16:00
Zitternde Zungen
Artist Talk with Andres Kempe, Rutger Emmekamp and Miek Zwamborn moderated by Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz
Galerie Ursula Walter | Dresden | Germany


23.03.2024 - 20.04.2024
Exhibition Zitternde Zungen - Salon*8
collaboration with Andreas Kempe
Gallery Ursula Walter - Dresden - Germany

2023

22.10.2023 | 6pm – 7pm
Artist Talk: Photographer Tom Rankin   
An Tobar | Tobermory 

Join American photographer Tom Rankin for an informal conversation at An Tobar, where he'll speak about his practice, his Mull piping roots, and the work he’s been developing on Mull with KNOCKvologan. 

Tom Rankin is a photographic (sometimes film) artist based in North Carolina in the US where he teaches and directs the MFA Program in Experimental and Documentary Arts at Duke University. He photographs primarily with a 8 x 10 view camera, mostly but not exclusively in black and white. One of Tom’s ancestors initiated the Rankin Piping school at Kilbreanan. During his residency Tom will focus on this family history, but also on visible intersections of traditional culture and the natural world, farming and fishing, water and land use. 


22.10.2023 | 7.30 - 9.30pm
Quavering Tongues: Closing Conversations 
An Tobar | Tobermory (booking essential, 20 spaces max)

Join us and An Tobar curators Rhona Dougall and Nina Pope for an informal evening of foraged food and nourishing conversation on the experience of the exhibition and the questions it raises.  


09.09.2023 | 2pm - 3:30pm
Concert by saxofonist Flora Carbo
KNOCKvologan Barn

Flora Carbo is a saxophonist, composer and music leader from Naarm (Melbourne, Australia). Her unique practice creates novel musical environments that connect people through improvisation, composition and conceptual works, led by her explorations into the vocal qualities of the alto saxophone. Inspired by people, place and motion, Flora is developing a practice of composing, improvising, performing and being a community leader which is uniquely creative as it is diverse and varied.

Flora will be performing pieces she has been developing over the last few months travelling by bicycle in Europe and the UK as part of a 'Residency in Motion'. Presenting music in a solo capacity inspired by the unique environment and spaces on Mull will be a focus of her time spent at the KNOCKvologan Residency.

Sat 2 Sept, Sun 17 Sept, Sun 29 Oct | 10am-4pm 
Quavering Tongues: Alongside Artists Days 
An Tobar, Tobermory 

Come into the gallery and spend time with us as we experiment with materials, enjoy The Reading Room and find out more about how our work will evolve when it moves back to Knockvologan. Drop in throughout the day – all welcome. 


16.09.2023 | 2pm – 5pm
Seaweed Cyanotypes
by Juanita Schläpfer-Miller 
An Tobar Art Room, Tobermory 

Join Swiss artist Juanita Schläpfer-Miller to experiment with a cyanotype technique, using light to make a variety of images with seaweed.  In this workshop you will prepare your own cyanotype paper and learn how to prepare seaweed and other plant specimens for creating cyanotypes. 

Juanita Schläpfer-Miller is an artist, exhibition curator and outreach manager at the Plant Science Center in Switzerland. She has many years' experience designing learning exhibitions in the natural sciences and has developed workshops and experiments to engage people of all ages with plant science. 


20.08.2023 | 29.10.2023 (opening at 19th August - 19:00pm)
Quavering Tongues - Teangannan air Crith
New work from KNOCKvologan Studio: Miek Zwamborn & Rutger Emmelkamp 
with music by Rufus Isabel Elliot
at An Tobar in Tobermory on Isle of Mull


09.07.2023 | 2pm-5pm
Botanical Drawing Workshop
by Singaporean artist Jasmine Er
KNOCKvologan garden & Studio

04/11.03.2023 + 18/25.03.2023
Peat Restoration Project in Tireragan nature reserve


26.03.2023 | 11:00-13:00
Admitting the Possibilities Of Error 
drawing workshop by Kirstin Lavers
KNOCKvologan Barn


26.03.2023 | 14:00-16:00
Admitting the Possibilities of Error - These Days 
drawing performance by Kirstin Lavers
KNOCKvologan Barn


02.07.2023 | 14:00
Arandora Star Commemoration
Poetry event in memory of a sunken life boat with spoken word by the Ross Of Mull Poets and guest speakers.
Knockvologan Beach / KNOCKvologan Barn