As an artist and photographer whose research intersects with gendered narratives of exploration, between 2014-2018 I made a series of voyages to the Arctic entitled In the Wake of Louise Arner Boyd. Captivated by Boyd’s black and white photographs, evidenced in her two major publications The Fiord Region of East Greenland (1935) and The Coast of Northeast Greenland (1948) I rephotographed locations in Northeast Greenland where Boyd had sailed.

In 2016 I sailed on board North Sailing’s silent electric-powered expedition vessel the ÓPAL around Scoresby Sund, Semersooq, Greenland, Lat: 70° 29’ 0” N Long: 21° 58’ 0” W.  The repeated image entitled ‘Traces of Absence’ in the exhibition was made on this voyage, the shadow of the ships mast leaving a trace of our passing.

It was my first sight of the awesome immensity of the far North. I was awestruck by the size of icebergs that had calved from glaciers and ice sheets during the summer months and drifted southward along the fiords to the Greenland Sea. Many of the bergs were grounded, some frozen in ice and others moving along ocean currents at a rate of approximately 7 miles per day.