out of ice

Ogilvie portrays the psychological, physical and poetic dimensions of ice and water in Out of Ice. Fusing art, architecture and science in an experiential installation comprising ice, water, video projections and film, Ogilvie’s dramatic large-scale work is a portal to the hidden extremes of our planet.

Out of Ice was specially created for the subterranean spaces of Ambika P3, London, where the installation ran between 17 January and 9 February 2014. The project now includes a film made with Robert Page, and a major publication with Black Dog Publishing (2017). Out of Ice – the book – includes essays focusing on critical interrogation of Ogilvie’s work, but also poetry, journal extracts and the artist’s own writing.

In the cool cavernous interior of Ambika P3, Out of Ice presented two expansive water pools into which sculptural ice forms slowly dripped then eventually fell and broke the still surfaces; huge panoramic realtime video projections magnified the transitions from ice to water; luminous pieces of ice hung as if in mid-air; and a film projection of ice wall strata appeared motionless with only an occasional snowflake drifting by.

Out of Ice was also Ogilvie’s homage to the indigenous people of the Far North. Four films made in collaboration with the Inuit of Northern Greenland reflect on their deep, sustaining relationship with ice and its significance in their cultural and intellectual identity.

Within the installation Ogilvie explored the science of ice research in a film she has edited from footage shot by a NERC funded British Antarctic Survey expedition to Lake Ellsworth, an ancient sub-glacial lake. As well as harbouring strange and unknown forms of life, the very deep lake contains the potential to provide a history of climate change on Earth going back thousands of millennia.

Out of Ice is also a narrative about the life of ice; its behavioural and familiar qualities, its role as an agent of evolution and how it acts as a global barometer of temperature, economic and social change.

Nuannaarpod

To take extravagant pleasure in being alive

In ice we find the roots of our existence and underneath the ice the uncharted history of mankind.

Sara Wheeler, The Magnetic North

The Book

Project Collaborators

In an international collaboration with highly respected anthropologists, scientists and other academics from England, Scotland, Greenland and Denmark, Elizabeth Ogilvie has founded an exchange of social, environmental and cultural knowledge that has informed Out of Ice and many of her other works. Working with her collaborators, Ogilvie hopes to develop a language with the physical materials of ice and water where rationality and intuition together become an agent for socially responsible innovation in the Arctic.

British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is a component of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Based in Cambridge, United Kingdom, it has, for over 60 years, undertaken the majority of Britain’s scientific research on and around the Antarctic continent. It now shares that continent with scientists from over thirty countries.

Elizabeth Ogilvie has edited footage shot by BAS of their expedition to Subglacial Lake Ellsworth in Antarctica in 2012 for Out of Ice. In the early hours of 25th December that year, an attempt to explore the lake, deep beneath the West Antarctic ice sheet was called off. The UK project, involving the BAS, the National Oceanography Centre and several Universities, had been in planning for over 10 years. The ambition was to access the lake using a specially-engineered hot-water drill through 3 km of ice and, using the hole created deploy probes to take samples and measurements to look for life in the lake and acquire records of past ice and climate change. Drilling was ceased after the main borehole failed to link with a subsurface cavity of water, built up over ~40 hours. Without this link, insufficient water was available to continue drilling downwards to the lake.

For further information please visit: www.antarctica.ac.uk

Professor Martin Siegert FRSE

Director of the Bristol Glaciology Centre, Prof. of Geosciences, University of Bristol and Hon. Prof. of Geosciences, University of Edinburgh

Martin Siegert leads the Lake Ellsworth Consortium, a UK-NERC funded programme detailed above. Siegert has undertaken three Antarctic field seasons, using geophysics to measure the sub-glacial landscape and understand what it tells us about past changes in Antarctica and elsewhere.

The University of Westminster is presenting Elizabeth Ogilvie’s Out of Ice in the research-oriented environment of Ambika P3, reflecting its programme of ambitious works, exhibitions and events for a wide range of audiences.

The international conference accompanying Out of Ice – Reading and Exhibiting Nature – is produced in association with the University and co-hosted by the Universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh and Fairbanks, for students, artists, environmentalists, anthropologists and climate scientists.

Professor Tim Ingold and Dr Jo Vergunst of the Dept. of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen have a keen interest in the working practice of Elizabeth Ogilvie.

Prof. Tim Ingold is currently Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen. He has carried out ethnographic fieldwork among Saami and Finnish people in Lapland, and has written on comparative questions of environment, technology and social organisation in the circumpolar North, on the role of animals in human society, and on human ecology and evolutionary theory in anthropology, biology and history. More recently, he has explored the links between environmental perception and skilled practice. Ingold is currently writing and teaching in relation to the interface between anthropology, archaeology, art and architecture. His latest book, Making, was published in 2013.

Dr Jo Vergunst, Lecturer in Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, whose current research focuses on connections between art practice, anthropology and the environment has been collaborating with Ogilvie since 2008. They have run research seminars together on connections between art, anthropology and the environment. Vergunst is also contributing to the Out of Ice publication.

Assistant Professor Suna Christensen of the Department of Social Anthropology at Metropolitan University, Copenhagen, Denmark has lived, worked and researched in Northern Greenland for over six years. She takes a special interest in the relations between education, livelihood and place. During her PhD research she developed a particular interest in the relation between indigenous Arctic hunters’ livelihood practices, their sense of land and social attention.

In 2010 and 2012, Christensen undertook cross-disciplinary archaeological-anthropological research at a hunting site in West Greenland where the lives of present day caribou hunters sometimes mirror those of pre-historic Inuit hunters. In 2011 she journeyed with hunters across ice landscapes in Northern Greenland to explore the spirit of ice embodied in the hunters’ interrelations with the landscape. Christensen is also contributing to the Out of Ice publication.

Production Team

John Robb, Technical Director

John Robb, technical director of Edinburgh International Festival, is a specialist in engineering environments and has worked closely with Ogilvie during the development of Out of Ice. For 16 years he and his team have been in charge of collaborating with opera and theatre companies and visual arts events facilitating every technical aspect of their productions.

Peter Boott, Technical & Creative Manager, Hawthorns

Peter Boott is working with Ogilvie and Robb to provide technical expertise on Out of Ice. He has a vast experience of providing lighting, AV and semi-permanent and permanent installation services for large-scale events, including sports, TV, theatre and live events and London 2012 Olympics. www.hawthorns.uk.com

Rob Page, filmmaker, editor, Schedule D

Schedule D is an arts-based independent film production company. Page worked with Ogilvie on Bodies of Water at Dundee Contemporary Art and in 2012 accompanied her on a filming expedition to Ilulissat, Greenland.

Astrid Johnston and Tim Bremner, designers

Independent designers Johnston and Bremner are collaborating with Ogilvie on the Out of Ice publication, Out of Ice DVD and publicity materials. www.astandred.co.uk www.bremnerdesign.co.uk

Tom De Majo, sound artist and director

Sound artist and director of the independent games development studio Quartic Llama, De Majo is creating a digital/binary rendering of Ogilvie’s icemelt film and an accompanying sound work. www.quarticllama.com

Sandy Annan, artist

Annan is an artist who has developed methods of working with ice and snow to create unique textures for transfer to plaster and bronze. The resultant sculptures depict the processes of snow and ice melt, and erosion. Annan has assisted Ogilvie in devising ways of handling large blocks of ice, using a combination of research, engineering and artistic skills.

www.sandyannan.com

Janette Scott Arts PR

Independent arts consultant managing the marketing communications for Out of Ice.

Alison Wright PR

Independent PR consultant managing the media campaign for Out of Ice. www.alisonwrightpr.com

Jake Bee, Rob St John and Katie Fowlie, artists

Artists Jake Bee, Rob St John and Katie Fowlie have special experience of introducing green projects to young children and are working with Ogilvie to devise and deliver the Out of Ice education programme.

Out of Ice traveled to Contemporary Art Space Osaka [CASO], Japan in October 2014. A former warehouse, CASO is one of Japan’s largest spaces for contemporary art on the waterfront area of Osaka harbour.

Ogilvie has additionally collaborated on the project with the Universities of Aberdeen, Bristol and Edinburgh in the UK, and Metropolitan University in Denmark. An Out of Ice DVD and publication with essays by Robert MacFarlane is also available.