Thinking Circularly Diptych, watercolour with text on digital image, 2021, 61cm x 92cm.
This diptych offers a reflexive response to the question of how an individual might engage with, what Timothy Morton classifies as a ‘hyperobject’, the climate crisis. To combat the sense of extremity and enormity of being overwhelmed, this research instead seeks to ground itself in the intimate, close, and tangible.
The abstracted nature of a hyperobject, something so vast we cannot fully comprehend, is explored through a series of monochromatic abstract paintings using woad blue watercolour, a natural pigment made from plants native to the UK.
The accompanying poetic fragment considers what Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her chapter ‘Becoming Indigenous to Place’, describes as circular time, saying “if time is a turning circle, there is a place where history and prophecy converge” (p. 207). Perhaps laying at this convergence are the answers we seek, we need only listen to the stories which have come before.
This work was exhibited as part of the Relate North 2021: Everyday Extremes exhibition and symposium hosted by The University Of The Arctic’s ASAD (Arctic Sustainable Arts And Design Thematic Network) in collaboration with National Research Tomsk State University and University Of Lapland. To view the online exhibition click here.