Glacial Narratives

Glacial Melt (detail) 2021 Ink & acrylic on board.

“The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it” ~ Robert Swan

Climate change activist Robert Swan is the first person to walk to both the North and South Poles.

I took a screen shot of this quote while watching a zoom session called Glacial Narratives which was organised by Taigh Chearsabhagh Museum and Arts Centre in North Uist, in the Outer Hebrides of Scotland.

 I don’t know how I found this amazing arts centre, probably because I was looking at the islands in the Outer Hebrides in preparation for my artist residency on the Island of Lewis in 2022.

This talk ramped up the urgency of my visit to the 3 of the key islands at the forefront of climate change activism; the Outer Hebrides, Iceland and Greenland. They are part of a collective of islands and arctic centres which are affiliated with collaborative works between artists and scientists on climate crisis.

I’ve been reading all I can about ice, including a book about Greenland called, appropriately, Ice: Tales from a Disappearing World by Marco Tedesco, a polar scientist who recounts his trips to Greenland to conduct measurements on the ice- shelf.

The global social enterprise, Island Innovation organised a number of projects to present to the COP26 climate change forum in Glasgow about the alarming consequences of rising sea levels and pollution on islands around the world.

It has been playing on my mind and I realised that the new work I am making in the studio is a direct result of watching this program. I began a series some months ago called Plastic Tsunami. This new series Melt is a spin off from that. It includes artworks comprised of ink on board and Perspex, as well as plastic ephemera and handmade paper as a reminder of the plastics we find washed up on the beach near our house.

Art as activism sends a powerful message which can speak to the emotions of people. It is one way to bear witness to the events going on around me. 

We can feel completely overwhelmed by events out of our control, and yet creating art with a message helps me feel that I am contributing to positive action and activism. These meltings may be small, but we know that small actions when combined together can make powerful change. It starts with the first step…

Ice 2021 Ink on board