Glacial Narratives: The Greenlandic Chapter – Mary Walters, Elizabeth Bourne and Adam Sébire

It all began with an idea by Mary Walters, an Edinburgh-based artist who has recently been fortunate enough to spend time in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. With a background in geography and geomorphology, she works now mainly in print-making, and is increasingly inspired by the ice of northern realms. During her time in Svalbard, she met fellow artists Elizabeth Bourne (a painter and photographer who had moved from the US to live in Longyearbyen), and Adam Sébire (an Australian artist/film-maker who was marooned in the Norwegian Arctic for 18 months during Covid-19 and now lives there). As both Elizabeth and Adam make work about the same issues facing the Earth’s frozen polar regions, Mary invited them to exhibit with her, and together they produced Glacial Narratives: A Report from the Arctic for the Taigh Chearsabhagh galleries, North Uist, Scotland for COP26 in November 2021. With continuing support and input from Edinburgh University Professor of Glaciology Peter Nienow, they re-curated and developed the exhibition as Glacial Narratives: Cracks in the Ice for Edinburgh’s Science Festival 2023.

Mary, Elizabeth and Adam have each had individual experiences of the Arctic ice of Greenland:

Mary was artist-in-residence at the Ilulissat Art Gallery with the Arctic Culture Lab in June 2023, and also visited the Uummannaq Polar Institute during that trip. She was inspired by the magnificence of icebergs in Disko Bay, the varying extent, forms, and shapes of sea ice around Ilulissat and Uummannaq, and the intricacies, colours and sounds of the Eqi glacier. With materials chosen for their light weight, her works present both immediate and remembered responses to her visit.

Elizabeth’s first trip to Greenland inspired a life-long love of the Arctic. Later visits to this extraordinary land deepened her feelings and strengthened her commitment to raising awareness of climate change through her art. The impact of these visits is currently captured in her works in cyanotype, both large and small-scale, as well as in her paintings.

Adam’s Greenland-inspired works are filmed during multi-month residencies in Upernavik and Uummannaq: small indigenous communities through whom he witnessed the impact of rapidly increasing temperatures and declining sea ice. Both of necessity and aesthetic choice, he uses the elevated vantage point afforded by aerial cameras to suggest non-human perspectives on this changing environment.

“We are visual artists and researchers, who have each spent considerable time in Arctic environments. Individually and collaboratively, we have developed a complementary series of works that not only raise awareness of the wonder of ice as a material, but also ask questions about its disappearance. We do not claim to have answers, but we know that we have a responsibility to future generations to question our actions, and to contribute to the climate debates in any ways that our art forms allow.”

Mary Walters is a Scottish visual artist based in her home city of Edinburgh, and the producer of the series of exhibitions. Her current work is inspired by her research periods spent in Svalbard and Greenland, where she has become fascinated by ice as a material. Its many qualities have inspired her work with installation, projected images, print-making and laser- engraving.

Elizabeth Bourne is an American painter and photographer currently living on Svalbard. She has a passion for the Arctic, and her art focuses on that icy environment and the effects of climate change, The impact of her visits to Greenland are captured in her works in cyanotype, both large and small-scale, as well as in her paintings.

Visual artist, experienced filmmaker, freelance cameraman, drone pilot, video editor & stills photographer, Adam Sébire lives in the European Arctic (Norway) but works on films from Australia and the Pacific to Greenland, in between producing multi-screen video artworks. .His emphasis is on environmental themes, but with an artistic focus, specialising in creative approaches to documentary video production.