A La Luz: Arctic | Part I
Caroline McGonigal
Our blog’s title translates as “spotlight”, or, “to shed light on” a topic. In a new series of features, we’ll hear from artists whose work sheds light on the North – specifically the Arctic, often described as our planet’s thermostat.
Fife-based artist Caroline McGonigal opens the series, writing with a focus on her work with natural ephemera.
As Nan Shepherd says in her book The Living Mountain, “To aim for the highest point is not the only way to climb a mountain.” I, like her, feel that to appreciate the environment you have to experience it with all your senses. The natural world is my inspiration, and during lockdown, it has also been my solace. All my work comes from an innate desire to experience the environment in a more immersive way, and therefore some of my practice involves direct contact with my subject as material. Often my materials are unusal – like Icelandic salt, volcanic dust, clay, or the down from the Creeping Thistle plant. At other times I capture natural ephemera like shadow, wind and smoke – highlighting its fleeting and temporary nature and creating a parallel to our fragile human existence.
Prior to this period of confinement I travelled to Iceland in 2014 and 2016, and then Arctic Norway in 2018 to gather reference material for my work, as well as to experience the landscapes and people there. I have always been drawn to the North, to “the top”, “up” to cold climes. The vast expanses of space there and water in all its forms – seas, frozen lakes, snow, ice, glaciers – fills me with a sense of awe. The unusual wild and alien landscapes allow for peaceful contemplation, and a spiritual vibe that nowhere else I have been does. Perhaps it is the instability of the geology there, the volcanoes, and the geothermal phenomena. It feels like you are connected to the energy of the Earth, when geysers are erupting, and natural hot springs are steaming and popping from the ground beneath your feet. This, combined with the unpredictability of the weather there, reminds you very much that nature is in charge.
Frozen Lake, Iceland
When in Tromso, in Arctic Norway I finally managed to see the Northern Lights and that for me was the ultimate experience of natural ephemera. The green movement defied being caught in photographs or video, and I kind of liked that! It made you stand and just enjoy the spectacle that it was. I also travelled by ship around the northern-most tip of Norway and the land formations there – when viewed from the Barents Sea – were again strange and sublime. I experienced rough seas like I have never known, and unfortunately for me the worst sea sickness too.
Barents Sea, Finnmark
Water – in various forms – features in almost all of my work. Just like the human body, it is continually the same and continually in change, and therefore I think of water as a natural metaphor for life and death. It has both seductive and dark qualities and is filled with duality. It can alter its appearance dramatically by transforming between solid, liquid and gas, and is hard to express or define. Even in solid form it is temporary and could be considered timeless.
“Frozen water may be as ephemeral as a snowflake that lands on the ground and melts almost immediately, or as long lasting as the lower layers of glaciers whose ice may remain trapped for hundreds or even thousands of years, but sooner or later it will become gas once more.”
When in southern Iceland, you can see for yourself the physical changes happening as a result of global warming. Glaciers rapidly retreating year on year. You witness the stages of the process first-hand. Icebergs being washed down to the glacier lagoon below and eventually out into the ocean. Diminishing in size and losing air as they go on their journey.
This melting process informed several artworks. Family Portrait (below) features three lost ice fragments (family members) that were at their final stages of existence – lying, losing air on the black sand beach, ready to be finally washed out to sea. Here, they have been immortalised in print in a Family Portrait. I then chose to drag, swipe and push volcanic dust from the nearby Eyjafjallajökull volcano over them in digital gestures, as if giving them the final human push. This performance-like act was to highlight the impact we have on our fragile natural environment.
Family Portrait | Screenprint on Fabriano paper
The sculptural work Into the Earth (below) is perhaps more subtle in its reference to climate change. Making this work allowed me to spend time observing, analysing, and hand-making clay stones for an exhibition in Kyoto. Whilst sculpting this work, I chose to put my own bodily impressions into the clay. At first, they appear as ordinary stones collected from the beach; however on closer inspection, they are not what they seem. The impressions made refer to our human indent in nature, which in this case has happened directly, instead of an unseen impact created slowly over a number of years.
Into the Earth | Ceramic stones
Hanging in the Balance | Oil on canvas
Another artwork – Hanging in the Balance – originated from a series of photographs (what I call “plastic portraits”) featuring single-use plastic blowing in the wind. When moved by the wind, the plastic takes on an organic appearance. I painted this work in such a way that the entire landscape was formed of plastic with snowy peaks covering over it. By inverting the piece and titling it as I did, viewers were left in no doubt as to the environmental message here.
I hope in reading this, people gain some insight into my practice and understand why I choose the materials I do. Candle smoke has been a recent addition to my material list, and it ties in with the idea of “time burning away” – temporality. I repurpose used denim to use as canvas, and I’m experimenting with more eco-friendly painting materials. I have tried to use this time of confinement to reassess and update my practice, as well as to try new things. I have repurposed works and created collages and will continue to look at what I can do as an artist, to be more environmentally conscious.
Through my work I try, in my own small way, to encourage people to think critically about our true place in nature, in the hope that we can all create a better lasting relationship with it. In the words of a 17-year-old Swedish girl…
“It’s the only world we’ve got.
We are now standing at a crossroads in history.
We are failing but we have not failed yet.
We can still fix this.
It’s up to us.”
All content above © Caroline McGonigal | Used with permission
