CO2RE Artists: Miranda Whall
When Peat Speaks
When Peat Speaks is a multi-modal, interdisciplinary project centred on the GGR-Peat Demonstrator Project at Pwllpeiran Upland Research Centre, Aberystwyth University.
In collaboration with Professor Mariecia Fraser and the Pwllpeiran team, artist Miranda Whall will utilise datasets from instrumentation installed across 32 plots on a degraded peatland to create drawings, paintings, sculptures, and both solo and collaborative performances.
When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Cloudy Performance will be a solo, 24-hour live-streamed expanded drawing performance staged on the peat bog deep within the Cambrian Mountains. When Peat Speaks: A Boggy Ensemble will be a collaborative performance on the same site, featuring an ensemble of international experimental musicians and a Butoh dancer, immersing a live audience in the landscape.
The works hopes to engage audiences with the cultural and ecological significance of peatland, foster a deeper understanding of Green House Gas Removal and offer a post-human perspective and connection to the Cambrian Mountains. The project will run from May 2025 to July 2026.
Images: Boggy Cloud in progress, April 2025. Photos by Ash Calvert
About the Artist - Miranda Whall
Miranda Whall (b. Cardiff, 1969) studied at UWIC Cardiff; Emily Carr Institute, Vancouver; the Royal Academy Schools; and Goldsmiths, University of London. She has received numerous Arts Council England grants, including the ACE-funded Berlin residency, and was awarded a Major Creative Wales Award and Large Production Grant from Arts Council Wales. She was awarded the inaugural Live Art Rural UK Fellowship by the Live Art Development Agency (LADA).
Whall has been a co-investigator on several recent NERC-funded cross-disciplinary projects and works at the intersection of performance, expanded drawing, film and environmental science. She is the director and performer of two recent stage productions When Seeds Speak: A Seedy Ensemble, Seligman Theatre, Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff 2024, and When Earth Speaks: A Dirty Ensemble, Aberystwyth Arts Centre 2024. Notable and recent solo exhibitions include When Earth Speaks, Vane, Newcastle 2024, Crossed Paths – Sheep, Oriel Davies, Newtown 2018, and Passage, Institute of Contemporary Interdisciplinary Arts, Bath 2015. She was recently included in the groundbreaking exhibition Soil: The World at Our Feet at Somerset House, London 2024, and is exhibiting in The Trinity Bouy Wharf Drawing Prize 2025, touring exhibition until 2026. Whall was the keynote speaker for Digital Ecologies III; Machine/Material/Land at Bath Spa University, Bath 2025, and will be guest presenter at the Planetary Thinking: From relations to politics: pathways toward a planetary praxis conference at Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany 2025. Whall is currently a postgraduate and PhD research supervisor and lecturer in Fine Art at Aberystwyth University, a creative coach, and mentor for Arts Council Wales.
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Image: Miranda Whall using soil sensors. Image credit: Miranda Whall