We’ve seen the videos: huge shards of polar ice falling, slow-motion – almost cartoonish – into black waters. The image has become a poster-child for climate devastation and global heating. However, this image, so saturated, also brings fatigue. To connect this volatile, melting landscape to other topics – for example, British beaches and environments – can be difficult. Yet this connection is what artist Emma Stibbon’s work Melting Ice: Rising Tides explores in her solo exhibition with Towner Eastbourne. Through painting both the Arctic and Antarctic, alongside the cliffs of Eastbourne, Stibbon works as an ‘artist witness’ to the effects of melting polar ice on our British shores. Nina Carter (IFLA! Art Editor) and I were invited to Eastbourne by curator of Melting Ice Rising Tides and Towner’s Head of Collections and Exhibitions, Sara Cooper, to get an insight into the research, ideas, and development of Stibbon’s work for this ambitious project.

A Royal Academician, printmaker and painter, Stibbon’s practice pulls on first hand research, often drawing on location and working alongside geologists and scientists to document and reflect on ‘how human activity and the forces of nature shape our surroundings’. Her work has taken her across the globe to Hawai’i, Australia, Iceland, the American Southwest, and both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. It is the latter that Melting Ice: Rising Tides responds to, reflecting heavily on Stibbon’s time aboard scientific research vessels in polar landscapes. However, when Cooper approached Stibbon for this exhibition, Stibbon looked to combine this icey work with the real-time climate effects she saw in Eastbourne – the erosion of its chalk cliffs. Though the question of whether the destruction of these cliffs is solely linked to sea level rise is disputed, Stibbon wanted to ‘bear witness’ to the parallels of these un-natural natural changes, documenting them in her work and connecting these seemingly disparate landscapes.

Originally trained in paper restoration, Stibbon’s attention to detail and knowledge of her materials is evident in the effectiveness of these moving works. Throughout the exhibition, large scale inks and watercolour images guide the viewer through a landscape of ice, water and chalk. Utilising natural elements from her field sites, Stibbon brings sea water, chalk and rock, and the effects of weather into her work, evoking a sense of immersion in these environments. In a work reflecting her time on board a research vessel – where Stibbon attempted to avoid sea-sickness by painting on the deck of the ship – inky paintings are embedded with a sense of place through sea water crystals disrupting the flow of paint, colour bleeds from rough weather, and fantastic angular marks have been created as her ink has frozen on the page.

It is this narrative of ‘being there’ that Stibbon so effortlessly brings to her images, both in the drastic far-reaches of the Polar regions and the more familiar stretches of the Eastbourne coast. However, this marriage of place and concept has been brought to the fore through Sara Cooper’s attention to detail, history and fact. As Cooper reflects, ‘curation is storytelling’ and the narrative connection between the polar ice and the Sussex cliffs is one woven with archival material sourced by both Cooper and Stibbon alike. For example, next to the images created on deck of the ship, Cooper chose to hang a map reflecting the course of Stibbon’s journey, as well as a log book and ephemera from her trip. There are also postcards, paintings and photographs of the Eastbourne landscape punctuating the exhibition. Before entering the exhibition, Cooper invited us into the Towner archive. Full of paintings, prints, ceramics and documents, the archive was a space full of the rich history of both this gallery and Eastbourne. By calling on other artist’s renditions of Eastbourne’s landscape over the past 100 years, Cooper and Stibbon’s curation of these artefacts tells a story of erosion and change. Cooper reflected that the process made her consider how artists can ‘evidence’ changing climates, through painting, drawing and documenting landscapes.

The exhibition ends with a documentary by Racquet Studios, about Stibbon and Cooper’s process and work together, and how Stibbon’s practice has evolved for the project. Stibbon’s well-researched connection to landscapes at the extremes of our planet is evident in her considered approach both to concept and creation. The exhibition was an inspiring reminder to think about how creative documentation of place and time can benefit wider goals both through storytelling, but also as evidence of change and destruction. Melting Ice Rising Tides champions the value of the arts within scientific and research spaces – catch the exhibition at Towner Eastbourne until the 15th of September.