Hyperborean thoughts: a studio analysis of cold places

"Winter is by far the oldest of the seasons and it confers age upon our memories. In the outside world, snow covers all tracks, blurs the road, muff1es every sound, conceals all colours. As a result of this universal whiteness we feel a form of cosmic negation in action". - Gaston Bachelard (1958).¹ Polar regions on Earth are renowned for their dizzying spatial disorientation and extreme distortion of time.² This project sets out to examine cold space by highlighting the peculiarities and eccentricity surrounding cold geographical locations and to further examine linkages between time and place through a new series of studio work. With the advent of Arctic exploration in the early twentieth-century, artists, writers and film­ makers of the time began to utilise the Arctic as a space to canvas their neo-romantic ideas surrounding the themes of nature, beauty, the mysterious and the supernatural. This research project aims to examine cold space as a metaphor for day-dreaming and will visually document this process through the production of a number of diminutive-scale works on paper which reflect present day thinking surrounding cold space, including the imagined, the experienced and the dreamt. It draws comparisons between the transformative qualities of cold landscape environments and contemporary philosophical thinking.