EVERYTHING NOTHING

Everything nothing

Hand written text in ink on an inkjet print on artists' paper.

88 x 78 cm.

The ice sheets of Antarctica are an endless expanse of nothingness. Its the kind of intense nothingness that both fills and empties the mind. Enfolded within the ice and revealed by the echograms and ice cores are 900,000 years of the history of the Earth. These waves of land and ice are like a heartbeat of the Earth.

EXPLORERS AT THE EDGE OF THE VOID

Explorers at the Edge of the Void + detail

Hand written text in ink on an inkjet print on artists paper. 106 x 235 cm.

Not long after I returned from Antarctica, my wife and i were invited to CERN to see the new Hadron Collider under construction. The experiment which is due to take place this year, will attempt to prove the Theory of everything, which will mimic the Big Bang and give us an insight into the origins of the Universe. It will also bring to a conclusion nearly a century of research into the nature and origins of matter;  the strange Zen-like world of particle physics, which places man and his thinking as part of the equation rather than outside of it.

This is something which has always intrigued me and it struck me that this century of research into the smallest and largest universes, went hand in hand with the exploration of the last uncharted place on Earth; Antarctica.

Einstein, plank, Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen were all contemporary explorers. They were looking at absolute matter and absolute mind. Nature was in all senses, a blank white canvas of exploration. It is ironic that instead of seeing the truth of what it means to be a part of nature, society has continued to dominate it, often using science, and the result is the devastating climate change we see today and which is so evident in the melting glaciers of the Antarctic Peninsular.

This work reads from the bottom up, starting with a mix of Antarctic explorers and Nobel Laureate physicists, splitting into two distinct groups divided by 'the theory of everything' and 'everything nothing'. It culminates in the equations which go to make up the four forces of Nature that constitute the Theory of Everything: Quantum Chromodynamics, Lagrangian, Electromagnetic and Quantum Mechanics. If the experiment works we will see the particle tracks of the Higgs Bosun theory; what Leon Lederman called 'The God Particle'.

UNDER THE ICE

Under The Ice, Over the Unknown, detail Flight G23

pencil and Ink on an inkjet print on artists' paper. 206 x 87 cm.

Albatross

Albatross I - Blue Crayon and pencil on artists' paper. 75 x 75 cm.

Albatross II - Inkjet print and pencil on artists' paper. 103 x 103 cm

Over the two months I was in Antarctica, the Met Officer at Rothera gave me daily, a satellite image, a pressure image and an image of winds. Here I have combined the wind diagrams over one day with the flight of an Albatross around Antarctica over 18 months. the bird is tracing the 55d latitude, which is where the warm currents are meeting the cold circumpolar  current and so giving rise to a vast array of marine life. The albatross is a bird of the wind, skimming the waves in search of food.

LANDSCAPES OF THE MINDS EYE

Double echo - Inkjet print - 134 x 114 cm

This echogram from East Antarctica, has been superimposed with an echocardiogram of the pilots heart beat. Both use a similar imaging technique.

Lake Concordia + (detail) - Biro on an inkjet print on vinyl. 130 x 114 cm.

The ice here is over 4 km. deep and the underlying Earth is hot, so a lake has formed. each line of biro represents over a hundred years in time and accumulation. Antarctica has been covered with ice for around 900,ooo years, which is about the time man has been on the Earth.

UNDER SKY BLU

Under Carrara Nunatac - Inkjet print, 74 x 89 cm.

Under Sky Blu - Inkjet print, 72 x 150 cm.

This is from an echogram, which is a radar image bounced through the ice from an aircraft and imaged in a computer. The image itself can be 20 m. or so long. Here, I have taken sections under Sky Blu, from Flight G23 and layered them in Photoshop to produce what is a fictitious landscape under the ice, which does however rely on concrete data.

LIFE IN THE PRESENCE OF DEATH

Life in the Presence of Death - a gene sequence from a proto-bacteria found in the soil of the Ellsworth mountains. Antarctic earth on artists' paper. 131 x 100 cm.

ANTARCTIC WINDS

Wind Vortices, Embossed paper, 72 x 65 cm.

Antarctic Winds, 24 & 25 January 2006 - Inkjet print on artists paper with pencil. 75 x 73 cm.

Antarctic Winds, 27 & 28 January 2006 - Inkjet print on artists paper with permanent ink on transparent film superimposed. 75 x 73 cm.

More images on the ice

On The Ice, images for an exhibition at Beaux Arts London

Dreaming of ice

It is over a year now since I was down South. It has taken me this length of time to re orientate myself and make sense of the experience. As time moves on and I continue to explore the science and imagery which is my resource and way into exploring something deeper, those first hand experiences take on a different meaning within a wider context.

It is difficult to put this into words because the language is visual, but the echograms from under the ice have sparked all sorts of associations, since they are in effect a picture of the Earths heartbeat over 900,000 years, which is roughly the length of time humans have walked the Earth. So I have been working with these, relating them to human heartbeats (echocardiograms from the pilot who flew the radar flights). Also using them as a ground with which to compare the exploration of the Earths last physical frontier with the exploration in the mind of the origins of the universe, which is coming to some kind of conclusion now with the big experiment of the Theory of Everything at Cern in Switzerland.

I have tried to find ways of talking about the absolute nothingness of various experiences deep in Antarctica. In a sense this nothingness contains everything.

I have also been working with satellite and computer generated imagery of winds over Antarctica on particular days while I was there, relating these to the flight of an Albatross as it circumnavigates Antarctica over 18 months.

And I am exploring way of talking about life in the presence of death, through gene sequences stencilled in Antarctic soil, of proto-bacteria found in soil from the Ellsworth mountains. This is the most basic life form in the most lifeless place on the planet.

The work I am preparing for the show at Beaux Arts in Cork Street on 1st April, is in two parts:

1) work made on site - photographic imagery of landscape, ice, clouds through an igloo, and ice drawings with skidoo e.t.c.

2) work made subsequently with help from scientists at BAS, using Satellite and met office imagery, GPS tracking imagery,
Molecular science and echograms and echocardiograms. With all of these I have had to search for the most appropriate
means and material to make these ideas visible. Most have been computer generated and printed onto papers that can be
reworked by hand. As time has gone on, I have searched for the most simple way of showing complex ideas. this is work
which will continue over the coming years, beyond the first exhibition.

There are also 3 video installations in the making.

Most of the science now in Antarctica is directed at looking at what the effects of Climate Change might be, now and in the long term. Most scientists don't address this directly because they are looking at the minutiae. As an artist I have the luxury of looking at the bigger picture, exploring unusual connections. Climate Change is not written big in the Art, but is rather enfolded within its layers.

The images which follow are from my experience on the ice. Some of these will be in the show in April. All of it will have to be complete by the end of January, ready for the catalogue. As the works are photographed I will post more on this blog.

PS At present this blog is not working well with images. The colours are all wrong, so I will leave off posting images until it is fixed.

LEAVING SOON

My time here is coming to an end and I will be flying out on Monday 5th February. Rothera is much changed since I first arrived.
It now gets semi dark at night. Most of the snow has gone, the skuas have chicks, so are even more aggresive. It seems two eggs are hatched, and either the parents or the sibling, kill the weaker chick, so only the super strong survive.
All the snow has gone from the glacier (known as the Ramp) the other side of the runway, and any remaining snow is very slushy making skiing impossible. It has rained here twice and steam rises from the rocks. It definitely feels odd and not right. It makes me feel very uneasy about climate change.

I will keep the blog open and when work emerges from all the science and the data I have collected, I will post it. What with other work coming in I would expect to do this over the next 8 months or so.

THE FLIGHT FROM FOSSIL BLUFF TO ROTHERA

Over the frozen Sound to open sea.

IGLOO INHABITED

Simon Cantrel has just returned from 2 weeks at Sky Blu. He slept in the Igloo all the time and came back with these photos.

FIRST SUNSET AT ROTHERA

Photo Anne Brodie

FOSSIL BLUFF

Fossil Bluff is an historic hut established in the 60's. It sits on a moraine heap on the edge of Alexander Island, overlooking the frozen George V1 Sound with the mountains of the peninsula in the background. The mountains that rise from the back of the hut are composed of layers of sedimentary rock in which there are many fossils; plants, ferns, shells etc. Aircraft used to be able to land close to the hut on the snow, but climate change has melted part of the glacier into a lake and there is now a half hour walk to get to the hut from the nearest place you can park a skidoo.

The hut itself is very cosy with an oil fired Rayburn and four bunks with sheets and Duvets!!! If the weather is good, which it was when I arrived, you can lie out on the sun deck and get a tan. When I arrived I was greeted by Hamish, who I had last seen at Rabid working on ice soundings and Jade, a marine biologist. They greeted me with freshly baked sausage rolls. Heaven after the privations of Sky Blu. People are sent to Fossil Bluff for a bit of a holiday as there are not many Twin Otter flights coming through and time is your own in between weather scheds.




There wasn't a cloud in the sky and there was no wind, so in the early evening Hamish took me on a two hour walk to Benemnite valley to look for fossils. On our return we ate dinner did the 9.00 pm sched. on the radio then the 3 of us set off up the mountain to climb Pyramid the 2,500 ' peak behind the hut. We did a big circuit in the glorious early morning light, getting back to the hut around 3.00 am. In the Antarctic you go when the weather is good. In the week I was there this, my day of arrival, turned out to the only really fine day we had.






The day before I left, on my own, I climbed Sphinx, the smaller peak overlooking the ski-way and the turquoise melt pools on the frozen Sound. I also made a small work in stone, mirroring the shape of the melt pools, but without sunlight it was hardly visible.