Art-Science collaboration 2013 - 2020
Work in this gallery is from a long running art-science collaboration with Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Bremerhaven. The work came out of my long running interest in the peat moorland landscape of the North Pennines of England where I live. Peat is an important carbon store around the globe but for climate change scientists (and archaeologists) its an important repository of past climate change information observable in pollen grains from trees and other plants trapped in the surface sometimes thousands of years ago and preserved in the layers of acidic peat.
My initial work with climate change scientists on a 12 month Leverhulme Trust interdisciplinary residency in the department of geography and fine art involved following them into their field research sites, such as a peat bog in the Lake District, and learning how and why they do what they do. This led to other events and outcomes such as a multi-disciplinary research trip to a peat bog in northern Finland, an exhibition and talk at the Words by the Water literary festival in Keswick, Cumbria, a short residency at Brantwood, the home of John Ruskin on the shores of Coniston Water in the Lake District, and a commission from Manchester's Bridgewater Hall concert venue for a large paper cloud installation in their main entrance vestibule.
But perhaps the biggest art-science adventure for me was a doctoral research project in the Department of Geography at Northumbria University from late 2015. The highlight in this was a four week climate research and training expedition in late 2016 on Germany's famous research icebreaker RV Polarstern. My official position on the ship was expedition artist in residence which included making a collaborative 10m mural in acrylics on linen, possibly the longest painting ever made at sea. I made a series of acrylic paintings, watercolours, multiple sketches of the scientists at work, films of their practical tasks and a 34 000 image stop frame movie of the view of the sea and sky from high up on the ship.
Many other artworks came out of the artistic experimentation and production phase of the project, some more successful than others. One interesting output was a series of collage paintings incorporating the raw data from an atmospheric science project on the ship called TROPOS based in Leipzig University. The scientists fired a continuous laser beam 10km up into the sky above the ship and recorded what was scattered back. The technology allows them to 'see' different physical aspects of the sky such as water vapour, ice aerosols, Saharan dust and smoke from central African forests. One painting arranged the entire 24 days worth of atmospheric aerosol data like a comic book strip cartoon over which I painted a tropical oceanic sunset that I witnessed near the Canary Islands.
Although the PhD never materialised (I was overwhelmed by the writing and couldn't justify an original contribution to the silo of knowledge in cultural geography around art-science) I have written an MPhil which has yet to be examined at a viva voce delayed by the Covid-19 restrictions. I am exploring the possibility of joining my friends from Leipzig University on an expedition to the Arctic next year as artist in residence to explore the interaction between melting sea ice, the ocean and the atmosphere above. They are keen to have me on board as artist in residence if I can raise the extra funding needed to produce exhibition work and stage an exhibition in Germany. Now that we are leaving the EU that could be very hard to find but worth a try.