For the last few months, the appearance of 18 yellow towers in the Port of Leith has caused a stir among the locals. The towers are only there on a temporary basis and will eventually form part of an offshore wind farm.
Had they been painted battleship grey, I doubt we would be talking about them. Bright yellow, by contrast, is a difficult colour to ignore, placing them somewhere between infrastructure and public art. As such, they’ve inadvertently become a creative prompt.
Yellow Towers self-describes as a community art project in progress. At the moment, it exists only as a website, but the organisers are searching for an exhibition space to house the work these structures have inspired.
In common with most open-access projects, the prompt has captured people’s imaginations in different ways, with no dominant style. Some contributors have submitted stylised photographs or paintings. Others have written poetry, given the towers alternative names, or even made sound recordings.
Because none of this was intentional, it’ll be interesting to see how long the structures stick in the collective memory once they’ve been moved offshore.
Even if no exhibition goes ahead, I hope the website remains available for a year or two, if only to fossilise this brief period in 2026 when yellow invaders temporarily occupied the skyline of Leith.
