Meltwater, 2024 ongoing

In 2023 I had the opportunity to travel to Iceland to explore, draw, and research glaciers. I was interested in the effects of climate change on the melting of glacier ice and how that might be represented in painting. The experience of sitting still, watching and listening as the ice was transforming in front of me was compelling.

During my research I was able to crawl around, get up close to, listen to and gaze down on several different glaciers. The sheer beauty of the surface with its wrinkled sculpted skin, the scale of the rivers of ice plummeting down from 2,000 metres to sea level in a space of just a few kilometres and the overwhelming sense of vulnerability and fragility was mesmerising. One of the things that struck me so profoundly was the sense of movement and life that was encapsulated in the stillness of the sculptural forms, created by the constant sounds of running meltwater beneath the ice, the groaning of shifting ice within its belly and the occasional collapse of the ice breaking off. I have tried to capture this sense of movement and the life force within the glacier by focussing on the glacial meltwater.

The paintings shift between abstraction and figuration as I bring together different viewpoints including aerial mapping of the vast, sediment rich, braided river systems flowing from the melting ice and the sculptural forms, the crevasses and seracs of the glacier in a precarious state of collapse floating in their own meltwater to highlight the glacier's scale, beauty, transience and fragility. I intend to draw attention to what is at stake and what the potential loss is.

 Over the next century, 80% of Europe’s glaciers will completely melt and become extinct due to irreversible human induced global warming. In 2014 a glacier in Iceland, Okjökull, was declared extinct, and there are now glaciers in the alps that have been reduced to remnant patches of ‘dead ice’, (ice that is no longer moving). The temperature in the Arctic is rising faster than anywhere else in the world and as a consequence Arctic ice is melting at an alarming rate. The impact of this melting will forever change the cultural and natural landscapes of Arctic countries and the European Alps with catastrophic ecological consequences. As well as that there is the tragic loss of the uniquely beautiful and fragile aesthetics that glacial landscapes embody. 

My solo exhibition, Meltwater was exhibited at Bett Gallery, Hobart in December 2024

https://www.bettgallery.com.au/exhibitions/339-sue-lovegrove-meltwater/