Over the horizon
Jean Brundrit
02.06.21 - 08.07.21
Main gallery
Over the horizon is an exhibition of photographs of icy landscapes made in the Antarctic in the summer of December 2019/January 2020. Brundrit spent six weeks aboard a research ship, the SA Agulhas II, photographing the environment – the ice shelf, sea ice, pack ice, and the sea. Instead of a conventional camera lens made from glass, she photographed with a lens made out of ice.
Brundrit explains, “The idea behind this project arose from my interest in rapid climate change and an engagement with making artworks in this area. And specifically from a thought I had while photographing ice in my photographic studio in 2016 – I wondered if ice shaped into a lens could form an image. And if it could, how would ice see the world? These two interests merged into this project. Through experimentation I established that ice shaped into a lens could form an image. Photographing in Antarctica seemed the logical extension.”
An ice lens offers few guarantees. Where photographs typically stabilize a landscape by reproducing it in print, these images are sensitive to the sheer impossibility of fully translating this vast, cold world, let alone holding it still. Like paintings, Brundrit’s luminous photographs privilege impressions and experiences over anything that might be called a record. But ironically, she comes closer to formally approximating the world than photographers usually do. Her instrument is her environment: the play of light on water, fleeting and unpredictable.
As the viewer moves around the gallery the photographs move too, shifting in their proximity to their subjects, degree of abstraction, and colour palette. They are displayed individually or in clusters, sometimes grouped to form a panoramic view. This formal variation within the series, combined with the layout of the exhibition, creates the rhythm of movement, an impression of travelling along.
Included in the exhibition are three photographs made with a conventional camera. The viewer encounters these as they exit the gallery. The images are large and displayed without glass, allowing for a more immersive viewing experience. The photographs appear to be of a seething mass of light and energy, but the subject is ambiguous and open to interpretation. Although climate change makes for an uncertain and precarious present, Brundrit’s photographs collectively provide a space to imagine the existence a future world.
Download the full catalogue here