Sue Lovegrove 'MELTWATER'

 

- I have tried to capture this sense of movement and the life force within the glacier by focussing on the glacial meltwater...

 

This series is based on my research trip to Iceland last year when 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.

 

The experience of sitting still, quietly watching and bearing witness to a glacier imperceptibly melt is both compelling and horrifying. 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. 

 

 

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