This month we are very happy to welcome back artist Mhairi Killin

Mhairi Killin is a visual artist from the Isle of Iona in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. She makes her return to Svalbard this February to continue the research and development of ‘Svalbard & The Hebrides - Island Archipelagoes in the Anthropocene’, which started at Artica in October/ November last year.

This project sits in the wider context of the generative force of ‘islandness’ as a recognised geographical form of the Anthropocene, and the prominence of islands in recent contemporary thinking, scholarly research, policy making and activism around climate change.

Mhairi says of this return to Svalbard, “By being in situ, engaging with the local artistic, research and educational community, and through my own methodology of situated drawing as a process of enquiry, I will continue to research why and how contemporary art practice should engage with islands, and how this is being approached on Svalbard in relation to the climate emergency, post colonial island environments, and islands which have experienced cultural and resource extraction. 

The residency is an opportunity for research and knowledge exchange between two island locations. I will bring my island context and artistic approach to Artica Svalbard and in return discover how artistic practice and research on the Svalbard archipelago is approaching the above mentioned issues. 

I will also be thinking about the metaphysical connection to place so evident in my own location and culture in the form of the Gaelic Otherworld, and enquiring if this connection is evident on Svalbard despite there never being an indigenous population. Perhaps there is an equally powerful contemporary Arctic Otherworld or imaginary at play in the relationship of the human to the non-human and more-than-human worlds of Svalbard - a future paradigm which might act as a guide through what is coming next?"

You can read more about Mhairi here.