These are on show at the RWA, Bristol until August 20th 2017.
For those of you who can't make this here are some of images of the work - photographs, drawings and paintings - in the exhibition
The work represents initial responses to a thunder grey and pale blue world, encounters with icebergs and glaciers, watching drifting mist hanging in dark snow-strewn mountains, hearing glaciers calving, and sailing through a sea of luminous ice.
Trapped Air - series of photographs taken as I travelled
through Svalbard.
Printed on Titanium coated linen rag archive quality paper by Dave Hammond http://www.burntcandle.co.uk/
Thick ice
radiates an ethereal blue, hovering between turquoise with hints of cobalt. Glacial
ice becomes so dense over years of compression, squeezing, forcing out tiny air
pockets between crystals. Extremely dense ice absorbs a small amount of red
light, leaving a bluish tint in reflected light. Blue is a sign of old age - I
crouch down and look at the base of the glacier, here lie remnants from the last Ice Age. I think
about the hundreds, even thousands of years locked away inside, suspended in
tiny air bubbles, about how many years snow has fallen, compressing this
enormous thick ice mass that is slowly flowing down the mountain valley, the
sheer weight pulling with it the debris of earth and rock with it, sliding
relentlessly to the sea.
Walking around
ice lying on the shore, I hear the popping of air bubbles releasing ancient air
into the atmosphere; it’s as though it’s breathing out. In my notes I write ‘I can’t put down what I’m seeing… it seems
quite insane to be trying’.
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| Ymerbukta,Svalbard 105x146cm Ink, graphite, gesso, watercolour |
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| Fuglefjorden, Svalbard 101 x 75cm Ink, graphite, gesso, watercolour |
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| mixed media on canvas (two canvases) 150cm x 270cm |
