Return of the Light, 2025

Return of the Light

Each year, at the end of January and beginning of February, the arctic island of Svalbard (74° north) experiences the end of 84 days of polar night as the sun begins to creep back above the horizon. In this period of returning the light, the hours of total darkness are interrupted by brief periods of 'inbetween' light conditions known as the 'blue hour'. In reality, these hours can be blue, pink, purple, scarlet, apricot.

This body of work was made on residency at Sptisbergen Arts Centre in January and February 2025, in the period of the returning light. This was also a period of recovery from serious illness and ten months of gruelling treatment for me. During this period of living with cancer, I had been unable to make visual work in my normal way, but had documented the experience through extensive journalling. I arrived on Svalbard exhausted, physically and emotionally, and found a deep comfort in the experience of the almost total darkness of the polar night. The blackness met me where I already was.

As the light began to return, I began to see both the incredible natural beauty and the scars of human activity on the landscape, most noticeably the highly visible remnants of the coal mining everywhere around. Seeing vast heaps of extracted coal (the last coal that will be mined here) silhouetted against fast melting glaciers (Svalbard is experiencing the most rapid climate heating anywhere on the planet) was deeply disturbing. The consideration of the relationship between my own bodily damage and the violence inflicted on this 'wilderness' was profoundly impactful. Experiencing the astonishing beauty of this place whilst navigating the extreme weather conditions and natural hazards (don't go past a polar bear warning sign!) was a reminder of our smallness in the face of the 'nature'.

The images shown below were taken on a mobile phone in sub zero temperatures and often gale force winds. They bear witness to the harshness of the conditions in which they were taken. The accompanying texts are taken from journal entries written in the ten months of my illness and treatment. The raw beauty I found on Svalbard gave me the visual language I had been unable to access before to express my experience of cancer, and sat strangely coherently alongside my journal entries .

'Return of the Light' was shown at Sptisbergen Arts Centre in Svalbard as part of the end of residency show 'Meet me at the End of the Road' held in February 2025.

So alone and all at sea.

I'm scared to go beyond the warning sign. I know my limits.

Every glimmer of light is enveloped in a blanket of soft blackness.

I walked on my own. In the dark. In gusting snow filled winds. I was slow. But I kept walking.

You are alone. A tiny figure in the wilderness. No one is coming to get you.

I walk through the silence of the arctic landscapes of my memory. I find sanctuary, stillness, strength. I feel the presence of deep time. It helps me to keep breathing.

Just a single note in the silence.

I feel completely broken.

I feel I will never be free of it even though they cut it out of me.

Shame at my confusion and desire.

A sky like a bruised cheek. Stains of ochre, puce and calamine bleed out of the darkness. I feel like a hot mess of resentment, rage, rejection.

This year has broken me.

I feel in touch with some really dark places inside of me - barren, frightening, lonely places. This is the completeness of me.

A state of deep grief.

I am physically exhausted by a sorrow so deep it may never repair.

Very soft black dark.

Deep acceptance.

'You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.' Mary Oliver

'Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.' Mary Oliver

What if it really has been so simple all along?

I am finding my way home.

We wished each other a better year next year.

The mist clears. I long for the North.

I dream of the blue emerging light.

'The bewitching return of the light.' Christiane Ritter