EMMA STIBBON VOLCANO
Interview between Emma Stibbon and Helen Waters, Spike Island, Bristol, July 2017
Helen Waters The title of this show is Volcano. What is the background to this series of works?
Fig. i Map of Kı̄lauea
Emma Stibbon Dynamic landscape is a recurring theme in my work and I’ve long been attracted to places that are undergoing formation or transformation. This has led me to seek out areas of geological activity, so when I saw an advert for an opportunity to be artist in residence at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park on the Island of Hawai‘i I immediately wanted to go (fig. i). The residency gives an artist the opportunity to live on the rim of one of the world’s most active volcanoes, literally five minutes’ walk from the crater’s edge. The scale and power of Halema‘uma‘u located at the summit caldera of Kı̄lauea was remarkable to witness. I have previously visited and worked from several other volcanoes within Europe and Iceland but none the size and power of Kı̄lauea (fig. ii). HW You often visit landscapes which are very remote and subject to flux or change. Can you tell me what draws you to these places?
Fig. ii Kı̄lauea crater, Hawai‘i
ES I think I seek out unstable places because they give me a heightened awareness of my surroundings. I experienced several seismic tremors during my time in Hawai‘i that reminded me of the primordial forces at work there. As a species we generally believe our surroundings are immutable and stable, but of course that’s completely untrue. It could be political or ideological change imprinted on the built, urban landscape; in previous projects I’ve looked at cities like Rome or Berlin that have undergone seismic shifts through political turbulence and how this has radically changed the topography of the city. Looking at landscape that’s formed by geological forces or by climate is equally compelling, visualising how this has been imprinted on the terrain. We are now clearly in a time of extreme change and I realise I am a witness to this. Many glaciated sites that I’ve been looking at will change beyond recognition within the next few decades – as an artist I find it a challenge to respond to that. HW For me, there’s a difference between earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other natural phenomena, and what’s going on in somewhere like the Arctic where change – climate change – is a result of human intervention in the natural world. ES Yes that’s true, we are causing dramatic acceleration through global warming whereas with volcanic landscape we are powerless to influence its behaviour.
drawing somehow imprints the place and the experience on my memory, unlike photography. I’m not sure why this is, perhaps it’s due to the temporality of making a drawing, the gesture of mark, act of scrutiny and filtering of image. When I look at a drawing I’ve made in the field (fig. iv) I find I can recall everything; the time of day, what the weather was doing – it’s that attachment to a place that I definitely don’t feel when I look at one of my photographs, which I find fairly two-dimensional. Back in the studio working on the large drawings I try to find an engagement with the subject through the media and process. If we look at the drawings in this show, clearly it’s a dark volcanic terrain, so I chose to work in Indian ink in which I’ve also incorporated volcanic ash and other material.
HW Does that interest you? Are you making any sort of political comment? ES Not a political comment, but I do I believe we are more separated from our environment than we have ever been. For all the technological advances in science, we probably have less connection now to our surroundings than we have ever had. People who live in affected environments are of course more than aware of what is going on around them. In Hawai‘i there are earthquakes every week, there’s a risk of tsunami and volcanic eruptions. Interestingly the people who live there see this as a cycle of change and renewal, there is destruction, but there’s also renewal. They don’t appear to believe that things are static; they know that we literally can’t trust the ground we are walking on. Through placing myself in specific locations I am able to somehow act as a witness.
HW And what does this use of found material add to the drawing? Fig. iv Sketchbook study Punalu‘u Black Sand Beach, ink on paper
ES I’m partly interested in how the physical properties of ash particles lend a granular surface to the image and the way the ash might sit as it dries out of a liquid form onto the paper. I like the fact it is uncontrollable and I have to respond to the way the ash settles (fig. v). But what really interests me is that there is some sort of exchange between the media that I’m using and the subject matter. I want to relate the materials I’ve gathered while I’m out in a location to the subject I’m representing and to impart something of this physical experience of place to the viewer. Whilst in Hawai‘i I learnt a little about animism – a Hawaiian spirit based faith where all material phenomena have agency, not only humans, but animals, plants and rocks – even shadows can embody a presence. I like the idea that the substance of a place holds its memory in its physical entity. I thought it would be interesting to somehow represent that in the drawing, in terms of its material construction. I feel there’s some sort of metaphorical exchange happening, through the act of drawing there’s a standing in for the place.
HW As an artist are you interested in the idea of the explorer? There is a long tradition of the eighteenth-century Grand Tour, artists would have visited Naples and Vesuvius…
Fig. iii Charles Furneaux, Kı̄lauea, c.1880, oil on canvas
ES Yes, I’m interested to see if there is a role for the artist in exploring and recording landscape through drawing. I’m aware that my approach is set against a backdrop of historic precedents of artistic representation of place. Observing something up close that is volatile and dynamic is a magnet for artists who are representing their environment. During the eruptions of the 1880s and 90s many artists made the hazardous journey to see the Kı̄lauea eruption, painting dramatic nocturnal scenes of the crater (fig. iii). Their paintings, sometimes made on site in extreme conditions, are an interesting combination of European Romanticism and American Sublime. I would position my own work and interest in landscape around themes of awe and an awareness of the power of Nature. These historic images are also a record of geological events and today play a role in the study of volcanoes. This chimes with my own interest in geological document. Fig. v Detail of ash media in Steam, Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō (cat. 3)
HW Can we talk about drawing? I would say this is your primary medium; you make large-scale, finished drawings, not paintings. What is it about drawing as a medium that appeals to you? ES I’m interested in how drawing can equate with an experience of place. What I realise is that when I draw from observation I have enormous recall, the act of
HW When you are out on location, how do go about gathering research for your studio drawings? ES I usually start by planning out the logistics of where I am going – I’ll consult maps, looking at routes of what possibly might work and discuss this with scientists or geologists. When I arrive I do a lot of walking, working with both the camera and my sketchbook. Drawing from observation on site (fig. vi) has a different dynamic to working in the studio, it’s more urgent, you can’t be self conscious about it. There
are challenges. In Hawai‘i I had to organise myself, it was extremely hot and walking and sitting out on the lava flow drawing was uncomfortable. The time of day, changing weather, the vog (volcanic haze) emissions from the crater and the terrain meant my on-site drawings were relatively small.
represents Hawaiian volcanoes, give a rich description of the goddess and her wrathful vengeance. In addition to the chants’ lyrical poetry, scientists now realise that these 400 year old chants correspond accurately with the geologic record. For example, Pele’s destruction of her sister’s precious öhiÿa forest has now been found to correspond with a massive lava flow of the same period. Another chant that describes Hi‘iaka digging for the body of Lohi‘au has also been found to match up with the down dropping of the volcano’s summit creating the caldera. It’s interesting how the concurrence of observation, knowledge and myth is bound up in our perception of landscape.
HW And how do you develop these into the larger works back home in your studio in Bristol? ES I’ll trawl through my photographic catalogue; out of 5000 or 6000 images I might print off about 300 photographs. I’m interested in the mediation of image that the camera gives, the framing, cropping and editing of the lens. I plan out my larger drawings often photocopying and redrawing over these source photographs, and referencing my on-site drawings. In evolving an image I’m happy to montage elements or shift things compositionally. Despite my work being firmly rooted in the external world I’m not committed to a faithful representation of place. Rather I’m interested in a play between a figurative illusion of space and an abstract division of the picture plane. Achieving a beauty in the image is important, but often there are darker social or political themes embedded within an unstable terrain.
HW Can we talk about scale? Most of your drawings are very large and this exhibition includes a new woodcut that must be the biggest print you have ever made. Do you prefer to work on this scale because of your monumental subject matter? ES One of the things that I really want to communicate to the observer is that sense of the physical experience of place. Working on a large scale I’m interested to see whether it’s possible to reveal the urgency of our relationship with environment by visually immersing the viewer in the image. Scale also offers me the opportunity to play with the construction of the image, I would like to equate it with a cinematic experience. Most of my work needs a certain amount of distance to read it, the image visually collapses when you get close up (fig. vii). In particular the cut marks of the woodcut process only hold together at a distance.
HW Are you interested in a scientific understanding of the places you visit?
Fig. vi Sketchbook studies of tumuli, Kı̄lauea Iki, ink and gouache on coloured paper
ES Yes, often when I’m developing a project I will seek out expertise from a specialist in that field such as a geologist or glaciologist. At Kı̄lauea I was fortunate to meet volcanologists at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory located on the caldera rim. They provided me with insight into the dynamic forces that drive change on location so I could begin to identify features in the landscape. Their work involves monitoring the early signs of potential eruptive activity and making reliable eruption forecasts and hazard assessments. Interestingly long-term forecasting of a year or more is still elusive and difficult for them to predict. However (fortunately!), they are usually able to detect short-term activity of hours to days through their monitoring. HW Hawai‘i is quite a storied landscape, can you tell me how this impacted your work? ES Hawaiian oral traditions are vivid in their description of place, and that really interests me. Hawaiian chants, embodied in the deity Pelehonuamea (Pele) who
HW Did you always conceive Caldera Overlook (cat. 10) as a woodcut?
Fig. vii Detail from Caldera Overlook, woodcut on Japanese paper
ES Living on the edge of the caldera I was able to walk in the lush rainforest at night and look at the glow from the lava lake beyond, illuminating the clouds. I wanted to give the viewer a sensation of looking through a dark silhouette of trees, and woodcut seemed a possible means of achieving that. My aim was to make an image that looked like an uncanny sunset that in reality was fire. Woodcut has this graphic impact that can give tonal drama to an image. I worked in two sets of blocks, the blended under colour and then a second black block that sits on top. I was thinking about Japanese artists like Hokusai and Hiroshige who achieve this beautiful blend of colour on the block – a technique called bokashi. Woodcut has an organic feel to it; you have the grain of the wood obviously, but this also determines the marks you can cut because it’s more difficult to cut against the grain. I quite like that rawness as opposed to something flat and inert like lino. It also seemed appropriate to use wood to depict a
rain forest. I’ve always felt attracted to woodcut – you are cutting your highlights out of a dark plane. It’s a kind of dark, god-like thing to illuminate something as opposed to building up a tonal image on a white page. HW And in a similar way to woodcut, drawing with ink on paper doesn’t allow for much reworking... ES Yes that’s true. When you drop ink into water it determines its own settling which has an affinity with something more ethereal like smoke or steam. A drawing like Lava Shield (Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō II) (cat. 1) naturally lends itself to ink because of its fluidity and softer tonal range. So, yes, my choice always relies on that marriage between media and the image. HW Aside from the woodcut, there’s not a lot of colour in the exhibition, just a little blue or pink here and there; the majority of your drawing is monochrome. Can we talk about colour – when you choose to use it and when not? ES Obviously the lava lake is this fantastic fiery orange and my decision to translate that primarily into black and white loses something of the dramatic impact of the place. However I find working in monochrome allows me a graphic sensibility, a way of registering tonal value to define form. I’m primarily interested in how light falls on surface or in atmospheric effects. Where I have used colour it is usually to give a tonal depth to the image rather than chromatic hue. Working in monochrome allows me to focus on the physical elements and the play of light and dark – in terms of registering tone I guess I make a choice against colour. HW Could you describe how the volcanic landscape has been an influence in this series of works?
Fig. viii A pāhoehoe breakout
ES The drawings Broken Tumulus (cat. 2) and Collapsed Pavement (cat. 7) are made in response to Kı̄lauea Iki, a pit crater situated next to the main summit caldera of Kı̄lauea. Walking along the lava pavement floor you have to negotiate these uplifted clefts or cracked dome features. These formations are created when the upward pressure of the molten lava within a flow pushes or buckles the overlying crust, often breaking the lava pavement. It presents a terrifying sight of sublime proportions; even fifty years after the event, the surface of the pavement floor is still hot to the touch.
Fig. ix The Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō cone in June 1992
Fig. x The same view of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō in August 1997, after a large collapse of its top in January 1997
I think in a strange way they have a resonance with my drawings of cracked ice floes from Antarctica. I was also interested in observing the different patterns of lava formation. Molten lava can solidify in a variety of ways. The drawing Ka‘ū Desert (cat. 4), focuses on a formation of pähoehoe, a type of lava that solidifies with a beautiful smooth, ropy surface (fig. viii). Another drawing made from the Ka‘ū Desert, Southwest Rift Zone (cat. 5), looks at prominent open fissures that extend down the flank of Kı̄lauea volcano. Encountering these rifts in the ground was alarming! When I made the drawing Lava Shield (Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō II) (cat. 1) I had no idea that the shape of this massive landform had recently altered so radically – I was amazed to see a photograph of it before its epic collapse in 1997 (figs. ix, x). That experience of being in a landscape where elemental forces are at work is chastening. It’s a salutary reminder of our ever-changing environment. Despite our impact on most of the planet we are fairly powerless in the face of volcanic activity – we can only look on with awe. For me the challenge is in rendering this view, in trying to represent and ‘stage’ the subject through the composition and material construction of the pictorial space.
LIST OF WORKS
1 Lava Shield (Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō II), 2016 Ink, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 135 x 198 cm
2 Broken Tumulus, 2016 Ink, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 107 x 194.5 cm
3 Steam, Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō, 2016 Ink, watercolour, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 113 x 182 cm
4 Ka‘uĚ„ Desert, 2017 Ink, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 137 x 197 cm
5 Southwest Rift Zone, 2017 Ink, carbon and earth on paper 203.5 x 142.5 cm
6 Steam Vents, 2017 Ink, carbon, volcanic ash and graphite on paper 137.5 x 197.5 cm
7 Collapsed Pavement, KĹ̄lauea Iki Crater, 2017 Ink, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 153 x 222 cm
8 Halema‘uma‘u Crater, Night, 2017 Ink, pigment, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 193 x 152 cm
9 Uplifted Ground, Kı̄lauea Iki Crater, 2017 Ink, carbon and volcanic ash on paper 200.5 x 144 cm
10 Caldera Overlook, 2017 Four-part woodcut on Japanese paper Edition of 10 plus 2aps and 1pp Overall image size: 200 x 367 cm Overall sheet size: 214 x 372 cm
Biography
Emma Stibbon is an artist who works primarily on paper, producing large-scale drawings and prints. She depicts environments that are undergoing dynamic change and travels widely with her work. She has taken part in several international residencies including the Derek Hill scholarship at the British School at Rome (2010); Artist Placement in Antarctica, organised by the Scott Polar Research Institute (2013); the Arctic Circle.org expedition to Svalbard in the High Arctic (2013); Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut (2016); Artist in Residence at Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park (2016); and Grand Canyon National Parks Artist in Residence (2017). Stibbon has recently exhibited her work at the Towner Art Gallery, Eastbourne; The Polar Museum, Cambridge, the Royal Academy, London; Galerie Bastian Berlin, Potsdam Kunstverein and Museum of Contemporary Art, Hangzhou, China. Her work is held in private and public collections including the Stadtmuseum, Berlin; Potsdam Museum; the Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne; New Art Gallery, Walsall; Pallant House Gallery, Chichester; Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery; Russell-Cotes Art Gallery and Museum, Bournemouth; and the V&A, London. Emma Stibbon was born in 1962 in Münster, Germany. She studied a Fine Art BA at Goldsmiths, University of London, and a Research Fine Art MA at the University of the West of England, Bristol. She was elected Royal Academician in 2013.
Emma Stibbon is grateful for the help and support from: Hawai‘i Volcanoes National Park; Laura Schuster; USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory; Tina Neal; Gail Ferguson; Sacha Lapins; Stuart Bunce; Kathy Cashman; Tanya Ortega; Tracy Laqua; Amy-Jane Blackhall; Lisa Takahashi; Spike Print Studio; University of Brighton School Of Art; Richard Foenander; Richard Deal; Helen Waters and everyone at Alan Cristea Gallery.
All photography of Emma Stibbon drawings and woodcut by Stuart Bunce, Bristol
Designed and printed by fandg.co.uk
Cover image: Detail of Halema‘uma‘u Crater, Night (cat. 8), photograph by Stuart Bunce
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Title spread: Seismogram of volcanic earthquake at Kilauea, 12-11-2008, time 01:57:54.560 UTC, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Fig. i, Map of Kı̄lauea, USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Fig. ii, Photograph of Kı̄lauea by Emma Stibbon
Published by Alan Cristea Gallery on the occasion of the exhibition EMMA STIBBON: VOLCANO 2 – 30 September 2017
Alan Cristea Gallery 43 Pall Mall London SW1Y 5JG Catalogue and Images © Emma Stibbon and Alan Cristea Gallery, London, 2017 Interview © Emma Stibbon and Helen Waters Caldera Overlook (cat. 10) Printed by the artist and Amy-Jane Blackhall of INK on PAPER PRESS, assisted by Lisa Takahashi, at Spike Print Studio, Bristol. Published exclusively by Alan Cristea Gallery, London.
Fig. iii, Charles Furneaux, Kı̄lauea, c. 1880, oil on canvas, Courtesy of the National Park Service, Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, HAVO 311 Fig. iv, Sketchbook study Punalu’u Black Sand beach, ink on paper, photograph by Stuart Bunce Fig. v, Detail of ash media in Steam, Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō (cat. 3), photograph by Stuart Bunce Fig. vi, Sketchbook studies of tumuli, Kı̄lauea Iki, ink and gouache on coloured paper, photograph by Stuart Bunce Fig. vii, Detail from Caldera Overlook woodcut on Japanese paper, photograph by Stuart Bunce Fig. viii, A pähoehoe breakout Photograph courtesy Katharine Cashman Fig. ix, The Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō cone in June 1992, photograph courtesy USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory Fig. x, Same view of Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō in August 1997, after a large collapse of its top in January 1997, photograph courtesy USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory p. 12 Photograph of ash by Stuart Bunce p. 37 Portrait of Emma Stibbon in studio, photograph by Stuart Bunce Inside front and back cover: Detail of Caldera Overlook (cat. 10), photograph by Stuart Bunce
ISBN 978-0-9955049-4-3