At very first look, gamba grass appears to fit correct into Australia’s normal landscape, but the tall green tussocks are an insidious threat to indigenous animals, residences and life.
Critical points:
Gamba grass competes with native crops and can increase fire gasoline masses by 8 times
The weed is widespread by the Northern Territory and Queensland
WA is the only state to arrive near to the eradication of gamba grass
Native to Africa’s savannas and growing to four metres, gamba grass was released to the Northern Territory in 1931 for testing as cattle feed.
It was introduced to Queensland in 1942, and big-scale planting took location in the 80s as it took hold in Western Australia’s east Kimberley region.
It was not until finally 2012 that it was recognised as a weed of nationwide importance, competing with indigenous vegetation and acting as a dangerous accelerant in the course of Australia’s significantly ferocious bushfires.
Department of Biodiversity, Conservation and Points of interest (DBCA) conservation coordinator David Chemello said although native Australian species had adapted to hearth, they stood no probability versus a gamba grass hearth which could enhance hearth fuel hundreds by eight moments.
As the NT and Queensland keep on an uphill struggle in opposition to the invasive pest, WA is close to eradicating it.
Plant numbers decline
Mr Chemello is committee chair of the Gamba Grass Eradication Plan, a partnership venture in between DBCA, the Division of Principal Industries and Regional Enhancement, El Questro Station and Kimberley Rangelands Biosecurity Affiliation.
He claimed a control software began in 2011 and by 2018 they ended up ready to rely just 3,000 plants.
“By the up coming yr it was down to 300, by 2020 it was down to 23 individual plants and final moist year it was 8 crops that ended up discovered and controlled,” Mr Chemello explained.
Gamba grass can improve up to 4 metres tall and spreads immediately in dense thickets.(Supplied: CSIRO)
“This is textbook eradication and as near to getting concluded as we could potentially hope for so it truly is pretty enjoyable things.”
But he warned the battle was not more than nonetheless with success stories being “quite considerably and handful of amongst”.
“We nevertheless need to have to go out for in all probability one more 5 decades in the monitoring period of the program and that’s just to make sure that any seed that is left in the soil has been fatigued,” he explained.
Mr Chemello claimed DBCA worked collaboratively on a amount of initiatives to reduce or eradicate invasive vegetation, including a rubber vine program which was on track but nevertheless had about a 10 years ahead of completion.
Like gamba grass, rubber vine was out of management in Queensland and Mr Chemello attributed WA’s accomplishment to early intervention.
“We got onto these weeds when we nevertheless experienced a chance, if there have been 10 million hectares in WA, eradication wouldn’t even appear into the photograph but the space was fairly smaller,” he claimed.
“Even nevertheless it is a compact space it requires a ton of perseverance to these tasks 12 months just after year.
A diverse problem throughout the border
Even though the project is close to moving into the checking period, across the border in the Northern Territory conservationists continue their battle to incorporate gamba grass.
Pew Charitable Trusts’s Mitch Hart said the global not-for-gain championed conservation efforts in Australia, such as a partnership with the Gamba Grass Roots Alliance.
“We emphasis on Australia’s outback due to the fact it is really globally sizeable. It can be still general in pretty good nick, but it wants lively management,” Mr Hart said.
“Which is why we do the job on the gamba issue, for the reason that we see it as a hazard to some of Australia’s most intact tropical savanna.”
Gamba grass was at first planted in northern Australia as cattle feed.(Provided: Gamba Grass Roots)
Mr Hart reported gamba grass was a “triple danger” with large infestations from Darwin to Katherine.
“It truly is a menace to people’s lives, it is really a danger to the economic climate of the Northern Territory, and then it has the environmental impacts of cutting down and absolutely destroying Australia’s northern savanna,” he reported.
Gamba grass was the only weed stated as a precedence menace in the federal government’s Threatened Species Motion Prepare 2021-2026.
“Which is a authentic recognition of just how lousy gamba can be and the menace it poses to indigenous wildlife,” Mr Hart stated.
No assures with funding
Mr Hart reported when the NT authorities had fully commited $500,000 to the Gamba Military to combat the prolific weed, the federal federal government desired to dedicate funding if there was any likelihood of reduction, not just containment.
“The good information is that there are courses that are up and jogging that are well-known, these kinds of as the Gamba Army and a new 10-calendar year plan,” he claimed.
“But what we know is it needs far more effort and hard work [and] a lot more assist if we are in fact heading to do the career of lessening gamba in that spot.”
Mr Chemello stated funding hung in the equilibrium every 12 months for weed eradication applications.
Even with remaining the the very least impacted, WA was the only state pointed out in the federal government’s motion approach as a precedence focus on to eradicate gamba grass.
But the Gamba Grass Eradication Planhad no federal funding and was designed up of contributions from the Condition All-natural Useful resource Management Software, Parks and Wildlife, Division of Key Field and Regional Growth and the Kimberley Rangelands Biosecurity Association.
Gerstacker Grove is the only major piece of landscape connective tissue on the University of Michigan’s North Campus. Photo by Millicent Harvey.
The Eda U. Gerstacker Grove on the University of Michigan’s North Campus is the modern anti-quad. The North Campus is cloistered and suburban, separated from the main Central Campus by a mile-plus and the Huron River. It’s home to the school’s College of Engineering, architecture school, performing arts school, and several residence halls. The campus is more than 50 years old, but until 2016 when the grove was completed, its central hub was an undistinguished plot of trees and walkways with little to no civic presence.
Unlike the more staid Central Campus (known as the Central Campus Diag because of its canted but axial tree-lined walkways), the grove is a landscape that is doing things while inviting passersby to do things as well. The landscape is filtering and retaining stormwater, boosting biodiversity, and putting on a light show at night and when it rains. Meanwhile, the students of the University of Michigan can try out the swings or kick off shoes for a game of sand volleyball. The Stoss Landscape Urbanism design for Gerstacker Grove links the 800-acre campus together, connecting natural systems to the built environment and creating an unmistakable campus center.
“With a lot of these moves, we’re trying to play off or against the traditional quad,” says Chris Reed, FASLA, the founder and director of Stoss. Quads are visions of collegiate life, where autumn breezes flutter golden-hued leaves onto broad lawns defined by stately and historic buildings. As spatial experiences, they can be laden with nostalgia potent enough to gather alumni from far and wide, and images of college quads grace many fund-raising emails. But they have limited utility on their own, Reed says; they’re mostly good for “image and circulation.”
But not Gerstacker Grove. With its varied topography and parametrically designed elements, the grove pushes at the edges of landscape architecture’s technological capacity, ecological performance, and expressive imagination. Who wouldn’t want a brand-new quad if it’s anything like the $6.9 million Gerstacker Grove?
Charles Moore’s Lurie Carillon is a centerpiece of Gerstacker Grove. Photo by Millicent Harvey.
Gerstacker Grove becomes more active and engaging as you move closer to the outer edges. Loosely surrounding a central paved plaza and carillon, five bioretention basins contain planted miniature forests that collect rainwater. To the east and to the west are moderately sized, wedge-shaped lawns between stands of trees and pedestrian paths. On the northwestern periphery are the grove’s most active uses, a sand volleyball pit and a set of swings.
The grove was funded in part by a gift from the Rollin M. Gerstacker Foundation (established by Eda in memory of her husband). The new landscape was shepherded by David Munson, then the dean of engineering of the school that surrounds the grove. Originally known as the North Campus Diag before the Stoss plan, the North Campus quad was a square crisscrossed by sidewalks, with a few trees and no benches. Though the North Campus is every bit as densely populated as the Central Campus, “There was nothing really to do there. The space was not activated,” says Munson, now the president of Rochester Institute of Technology. It was just a “pass-through,” and too big to be used only for circulation.
Considering the history of North Campus, it’s not really surprising that its central hub grew up without an identity of its own. From the beginning, North Campus was conceived as a decentralized, car-centric suburban experience.
Responding to the incoming wave of students from the G.I. Bill, the University of Michigan Board of Regents purchased the initial 267 acres northeast of the school’s main campus in 1947. The university was already hemmed in by the city of Ann Arbor for half a century, and it was deemed too expensive in terms of dollars and town-gown goodwill to buy up more land. So, the school looked to the farmland beyond and hired Eero Saarinen in 1951 to develop a master plan for the campus.
Saarinen’s proposal owed much to his suburban office park designs, especially the nearby GM Technical Center in Warren, Michigan, designed contemporaneously with the North Campus. Saarinen’s North Campus plan featured widely spaced, long, and rectilinear buildings, huddled around open fields and one hardscape plaza, with a domed amphitheater (similar to the Technical Center’s Auditorium) on the periphery. When this plan was new, “people used to go out and take Sunday drives for entertainment,” Munson says. With broad boulevards and ample space between buildings, the landscape was as spacious as a new sedan, but not scaled to the pedestrian.
The North Campus’s Cooley Memorial Laboratory was the first building completed, dedicated in 1953 to celebrate the engineering school’s centennial. Because of security concerns arising from a research partnership with the Department of Defense, administrators initially considered making the building accessible only via underground entrance. Ultimately, this plan wasn’t pursued, but an underground entrance was built and connected to a nearby nuclear reactor on campus.
According to Fred Mayer, who began at the university planning office when the North Campus was still new in 1966, Saarinen never got clear guidance on the size, shape, and position of buildings meant to fill in the North Campus, and the plan was ultimately shelved. “[Saarinen] established the basic pattern of land uses, the academic core to this day is where he said it should be, the research and support areas were all distributed according to his plan,” says Mayer, who became the university planner in 1968 and stayed till 2003, retiring to write two books on the planning and development of the Ann Arbor campus.
From the plaza at its center, the space is defined by a series of moderately sized lawns and bioretention basins. Image courtesy Stoss Landscape Urbanism.
In one sense, acculturating engineering and science students toward landscapes that fit primarily between parking lots made sense—years of training on this campus could make the transition to Saarinen’s office parks for IBM or Bell Telephone seamless. Saarinen’s plan diffused the importance of a central gathering point and pushed the pedestrian experience that’s so beloved in college life to the margins. What the plan didn’t do was “develop a design concept for the [central space] itself,” Mayer says. What little planning there was, “was more related to the individual buildings than it was to an overall concept of the space.”
Sorting this out fell to Reed, who arrived with some revisionism in mind. “We wanted, in some ways, to critique [Saarinen’s plan],” he says.
There are small courtyards and landscapes elsewhere on North Campus, but they’re isolated islands, and the grove is really the landscape design that binds the architecture together. It connects to walkways at each corner, but with its parametrically designed spidering branches, it avoids drawing an axial X through the center of the square. The centerpiece of the grove is the hyper-postmodern Lurie Carillon designed by Charles Moore for his alma mater, but the surrounding buildings hover between unremarkable midcentury modernism and more subdued postmodernism.
In this design milieu, Gerstacker Grove stands out with a much sharper aesthetic presence across its four acres. It’s defined by a parametric precision that contrasts with messy edges of dense plantings. In addition to the 250 trees Stoss had planted (including bald cypress and serviceberry), five oblong bioretention gardens with a filter bed area of more than 10,000 square feet subdivide the space.
At the center is an asymmetrical plaza, surrounded by a series of spaces defined by topography. One of Stoss’s strongest moves was to alter the defining quality of the site. “It was pretty flat when [Saarinen] came there, but he got his bulldozers out and made sure it was completely flat,” Mayer says. In its place, Stoss designed berms that are 3.5 feet high, and the series of bioretention basins is only a bit deeper, but the contrast between the two creates a much more enveloping and spatially complex experience. Several features of the grove are meant to slow visitors down and push against the primary circulation role of many campus quads. If you venture on top of the berms, you’ll find a thicker fescue mix of grasses that require less mowing and maintenance and also provide a spongy texture that inhibits efficient movement and accentuates the sensory experience of the place. “It gets very shaggy, but it’s still soft,” Reed says.
The bioretention basins channel rainwater into the slow-draining soil. Image courtesy Stoss Landscape Urbanism.
The bioretention basins are planted with a dozen-plus types of water- and shade-loving ferns, including maidenhair and western sword fern. The dense ferns give the retention basins a misty, primeval feel. Each seems to be its own mole-scaled forest, self-contained and carefully composed. From bottom to top, there are gravel drainage streambeds to collect rainwater, a verdant fern understory, a surrounding bald cypress canopy, and high-density polyethylene canyon retaining walls holding it all in place.
The retention basins, which connect to a storage cistern under the sand volleyball court, help the university to meet its goal to retain 95 percent of stormwater on site. With its high clay content, the local soil doesn’t drain easily, and water is more likely to pool. “But we took advantage of that and said, ‘If we need that much capacity because it’s not going to drain quickly, let’s make a real feature out of that,’” says Reed. These planted basins help reduce peak stormwater runoff by up to 100 percent for a two-year, 24-hour storm event, and up to a third for a 100-year, 24-hour storm event. It also improves water quality by removing up to 80 percent of total suspended solids for a two-year, 24-hour storm event.
The grove’s topography sets up semi-enclosed outdoor rooms for gathering and relaxation. Photo by Diana Cheren Nygren.
Like most of the hardscape elements on site, the berms and basins were parametrically modeled to meet the stormwater retention requirements. The concrete pavers and all the elements that separate the plazas and walkways from berms and basins were derived from digital models and installed as a prefabricated kit of parts: 19 types of oversized curb sections, 19 backless seat wall types, and five different metal seats made by Landscape Forms. Befitting an engineering school and the neighboring Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning, these elements are knit together in a sinuous transition from oversized curbs to metal benches: coiled steel ribs emerging out of the landscape like a snake. There are also Adirondack chairs to relax in that kept students lingering on a cool, fall day, and plenty of room to throw a football or Frisbee, which complements the sand volleyball pit and a set of swings that are popular all through the day and into the evening.
But it’s at night when Gerstacker Grove shows off the most. A lighting installation made of more than 100 transparent acrylic rods placed in the bioretention basins glows in shades of pink, blue, and purple—cool colors that stand out all year long. Brienne Musselman, who was a lighting designer at the lighting fabricator Illuminart for nine years and worked on this project, says the process of integrating these ethereal reeds of light into soggy outdoor gardens was both engrossing and painstaking. To set up a test rig to determine optimal light colors, Musselman disassembled headlamps chosen for their narrow band of light (similar in diameter to the rods themselves) and affixed colored filters snagged from a theatrical lighting company before replacing the test rod. She changed filters for each test, sometimes doubling or tripling them to get the exact shade she was looking for.
Prepping for these tests before meeting with Munson and Reed took hours, and she tried dozens of filters. She spent six hours in a pitch-black conference room with both of them. “It was extreme,” she says. “We went one by one, over and over…. ‘Do we like this particular hue? What do we think about this combination of hues?’ We tried amber and didn’t like it. It was actually really fun.”
The light fixtures are triggered by a simple irrigation collector (“It’s the same type of device that a farmer would use,” Musselman says) that registers moisture and turns the system on. From there, the lighting array can pull in real-time weather forecasts for the area, and this is what controls “fader” permutations, causing the lights to “shimmer.” (Musselman, like most lighting designers, doesn’t like the word “flicker” because of its connotation of disrepair.) She programmed the fade patterns in the field with two settings: a slower pace for light rain and more intense glimmers for torrential downpours. The dynamic fade cycles across each basin in a wave pattern, from one to the next.
Because it’s on at night and only puts on its full show when it rains, the installation slows visitors down when the urge to rush by is strongest. “Usually when it’s raining at night, you’re trying to run as quickly as possible,” Reed says. “We wanted to take that moment and invert it, [to] make it the most beautiful moment in some ways, but also use it as a way to connect people to what’s going on in the environment.”
With ferns and bald cypress, the bioretention basins are miniature forests, contained and carefully layered. Photo by Millicent Harvey.
With the grove’s maturing plantings, the lights are a subtle experience, particularly during the day when the transparent rods virtually disappear. Even at night, they’re just one element of many; little neon monoliths that glow but don’t illuminate. “That was one of the strengths of how Stoss designs [its] projects,” says Musselman, who now works at the Illuminating Engineering Society. “They’re not afraid of subtlety, and I think oftentimes lighting can be really in-your-face.”
If the Gerstacker Grove’s most distinctive features are subtle, its place and importance on campus are obvious. In his many decades as campus planner, Mayer came across a simple litmus test for how effective the design of a central quad is: “Say to a student, ‘I’ll meet you in an hour in the center of the campus.’ And if the student knows where to go, you’ve got a pretty strong image.”
Project Credits
Landscape Architect Stoss Landscape Urbanism, Boston. Client University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan. Lighting Illuminart, Troy, Michigan. Structural and Civil Engineering Mannik Smith, Detroit. Cost Consultant Fennessy Consulting Services, Stoughton, Massachusetts. Contractor J. S. Vig Construction, Plymouth, Michigan. Precast Concrete Bench Fabricator Wausau Tile, Wausau, Wisconsin. Metalwork Landscape Forms, Kalamazoo, Michigan.
Zach Mortice is a Chicago-based design journalist who focuses on architecture and landscape architecture.
10 Northern Ontario women of all ages from the 19th and 20th hundreds of years will be highlighted in a new art project remaining funded by the Ontario Arts Council.
The task – the brainchild of Sudbury sisters Cassidy and Caitlyn McAuliffe – is titled Gals Who Crack Path and it consists of both equally actual physical and digital artwork.
The storytelling aspect is wherever a story is informed of the artists’ working experience in northern Ontario via text, maps, shots, movies and archival elements.
The female that motivated the sisters to undertake the undertaking artist Corline Maben Flower.
“We saw this truly neat photograph of this woman in the 19th century, who had ‘Lady Prospector’ transcribed on her canoe,” Caitlyn explained.
“And we began to glance into that– what is a girl prospector? And who lived right here at that time? Then we began to obtain out a little bit much more data about her, and from there we just believed we need to we really should get started a project highlighting other females just like this.”
A single of the tales that captured the sisters’ creativeness was that of Corline Maben Flower, an Ontario gold prospector in the 19th century. (Provided by Woodland Sisters)
Mattawa’s Rebel: Anahareo
Cassidy was similarly impressed by Anahero, who persons may possibly recognize as the previous companion of Gray Owl.
“She lived rather an exciting lifetime,” Cassidy stated. “She’s a author and a conservationist…and lived a vibrant, independent, elaborate expertise.”
“She went gold prospecting throughout northern Ontario and northern Quebec. And her story is just so, so intriguing to read.”
She also wrote a e book, Cassidy explained, called Devil in Deerskin: My Lifestyle With Grey Owl.
Monitoring down information about these artists is a little bit of a problem, the sisters say, and they’ve concentrated their analysis all around archival newspaper articles or blog posts from northern Ontario. They have also collected what they can from Fb pages devoted to northern Ontario record.
The artwork portion of the undertaking is a printmaking portrait series– carved linoleum rolled in ink, then pressed into paper, presenting a portrait of just about every of the ladies highlighted. (Provided by Woodland Sisters)
“We have a historic and social context to discuss about these women and recognize what they ended up dwelling by means of, what pulled them to the spot, what kept them listed here or what was it that they loved about this put at the time?” Caitlyn stated.
But the richest trove of information and facts, and what tends to make these historic characters occur to life comes from visiting the areas the artists on their own walked, or striving to monitor down family members associates to get their individual one of a kind point of view.
“I really like that feeling when you are learning about a genuine individual,” Cassidy said. “When you locate, for example, a private letter or something composed in their have words and phrases or or another person else chatting about this human being, you get just such a obvious thought of their character and what related them to the region.”
“I assume we just adore when you come across someone who is so enthralled by one thing – like birding or being a conservationist – and they are established, and it just seriously tends to make them who they are.”
When the job wraps up, Caitlyn mentioned, the sisters would adore to hold an exhibition of the performs.
“We would like to have all the portraits hanging up in a gallery wherever you can seem at the art. You can go through their tale,” Caitlyn mentioned. “We have some other dreams much too, like maybe a film or a e book.”
“But for now, they are going to be on line so everyone can see them and read through them.”
“For the Northern Lights” by Aleksey R. Location: Teriberka, Kolsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia “Nature is mysterious and unpredictable, and often leaves us open-mouthed at the inexplicable manifestations of its power. This image was captured in February in Teriberka, in the Kolsky District of Murmansk Oblast, Russia, on the Barents Sea coast. This night was definitely special. The perfect conditions for shooting the Northern Lights came together: frost, ice, a full moon, a clear night, and no wind. The weather was extremely difficult; the temperature was 34 degrees below zero, but flames like these make you forget the temperature. I had a certain vision of the photo I wanted, and because of the extreme weather, I had to build the photo in stages. Thanks to the moonlight, the landscape was nicely illuminated, and I got a decent balance with the overwhelming display of the aurora borealis. To get the most out of this opportunity, I took a combination of shots: one for the foreground and one for the sky. That way, you can see more detail in the foreground while retaining the detail in the Northern Lights. It was definitely a night to remember.”
The Northern Lights are one of Earth’s greatest gifts. When this natural light show takes over the sky, it makes for an incredible moment. Unfortunately, these auroras are only visible in certain parts of the world, so that’s where photographers come into play. Thanks to them, we’re able to enjoy the beauty of the polar lights no matter where we live.
To really get your fix of aurora photos, check out travel blog Capture the Atlas‘ annual Northern Lights Photographer of the Year list. They’ve selected the 25 best photos from photographers around the world and the results are as incredible as you can imagine. The list takes us from remote areas of Russia to the Alaskan forest to an Icelandic volcano. And in each image, the Northern Lights dance their way across the sky, only enhancing these already excellent landscape photos.
The gallery of images is also interesting in that it shows the wide variety of auroras that exist. From classic green, blue, and purple to yellow and pink, all of the colors are present. Both the Northern and Southern hemispheres are represented, lest you think that the lights are only visible in places like Sweden or Norway. For instance, David Oldenhof’s lovely photo of the aurora reflecting in the waters of a lake was taken in Tasmania. As the southernmost state in Australia, the Northern Lights can be seen there from March to September.
Take a look at some of our favorite photos from the list, which was curated by Capture the Atlas’ Dan Zafra. As a photographer himself, Zafra looks not only for images taken by some of the most renowned photographers but also for new talents and for new locations where the Northern Lights haven’t been photographed before.
These photos of the Northern Lights are considered the best of 2021.
“Forest of the Lights” by Marc Adamus. Location: Alaska, USA “Wandering around these forests coated in rime ice is one of the most magical experiences, but also one of the most difficult to capture. Temperatures are often in the minus 30s and negotiating the easily broken, crusty snow on snowshoes with nothing but a headlamp makes for great challenges in hiking and composing. I used the last light of twilight to set up the shot you see here and returned to it hours later as the lights were dancing overhead.”
“The aurora cave” by Giulio Cobianchi. Location: Lofoten Islands, Norway “This was one of the most beautiful green nights I have experienced since living in Lofoten. This was just the beginning of a long night of chasing the aurora until sunrise. I have been inside this hidden cave in all seasons since I like to explore locations and find new compositions that have never been seen before. Inside the caves, it is never easy to photograph; you have to use more techniques in the shooting phase, such as focus stacking and multi-exposure, for example, but I must say that these are the compositions I appreciate the most. I love the natural frame and the three-dimensional effect that they give.”
“Nature & Landscape photographer” by Agnieszka Mrowka. Location: Iceland “Another long and beautiful night in Iceland. I had had the foreground for the Northern Lights in mind for some time already and just waited for the perfect condition to come and capture it. I needed strong Northern Lights, a clear sky on the Reykjanes peninsula, and calm, windless weather, which is quite rare in Iceland. The photo was challenging in the sense that I had to run back and forth to adjust the settings on my camera depending on the strength of the Northern Lights. The place I was standing was also a bit tricky, as there was not enough space for my feet, so I could not even fully stand straight. When the lights came, however, I was able to freeze, staring at the mesmerizing sky above.”
“The Northern Lights cathedral” by Frøydis Dalheim. Location: Senja, Northern Norway “This image is the perfect representation of one of my best nights seeing the Northern Lights in Norway in Senja. The views were stunning, with snow-capped landscapes, spectacular mountains, and a dancing aurora that colored everything green. It was truly a night to remember. The conditions were perfect this evening in March, not too cold. The Northern Lights appeared not long after I arrived and lasted for a long time. I returned home really happy and grateful for this amazing experience.”
The rich variety of colors shows just how the aurora transforms in different locations.
“Tranquil” by Larryn Rae. Location: Lake Tekapo, New Zealand “I was on a photography trip when aurora alerts began popping up on my phone, so we started searching for a unique place to shoot them from. We ended up at this lakeside location, and as soon as the sunset faded and dusk fell, we could already see the color and shape of the aurora happening. The next few hours, the sky was filled with incredible colors as the pillars danced across the sky in one of the best displays I have seen for years. The aurora is my favorite night sky phenomenon to capture and this night was simply incredible.”
“Spectrum” by Stefan Liebermann. Location: Vestrahorn, Iceland “The full spectrum of the Northern Lights over the iconic “Vestrahorn” location in Iceland. What a dreamlike experience! A G3 (strong) geomagnetic storm hit the earth on October 31st, 2021, and produced these wonderful colors.”
“Aurora Australis” by David Oldenhof. Location: Tasmania, Australia “Tasmania is the most southern state in Australia. As well as having beautiful coastlines, World Heritage rainforests, and national parks to photograph, we also have the added bonus of being able to witness the most intense auroras in the country because we are the furthest south. I have only witnessed three auroras and this one was the most beautiful and longest-lasting of them. On the other two occasions I photographed the aurora, most of the brilliance could only be seen through the back of the camera, but on this night, it could be seen without it. Nature showed off her brilliance and I stood there in amazement for many hours. I can’t wait for Lady Aurora’s next dance.”
“Higher prediction” by Virgil Reglioni. Location: Northern Norway “Northern Norway hosts some of the most beautiful and dramatic sights you can find in northern Europe. Some nights, strong intensity auroras are predicted, which leads to incredible, bright displays spreading across the sky. The cold temperatures form ice shapes by the riverbank and these structures help direct your eyes in the right direction.”
“Polar-snow monsters” by Sergey Korolev. Location: Kola Peninsula, Russia “At the very beginning of my career, when I first started learning how to take landscape photographs, I was not at all impressed by photographs of the Northern Lights because most of them contained nothing in the composition other than the Lights and the sky. I always thought it was boring to take pictures of just the sky, but one day, I saw Marc Adamus’ photographs with the aurora borealis over some beautiful mountain scenery and I was really impressed. Since then, I have had a new passion – taking Northern Lights pictures where the landscape and its composition play the main role, and the sky with the aurora is in harmony with the composition. In this picture, I also focused on the “snow monsters” in the composition to make this shot look like an alien scene.”
“Aurora Sherbet in the Apostles” by Marybeth Kiczenski. Location: Bayfield, Wisconsin, USA “The solar storm that wasn’t but was: the events that unfolded from November 3, 2021 into November 4, 2021 will stay with me forever. The aurora sparked on this night was from a combination of an M-class solar flare and a CME; on their own, they were not much, but together, they sure packed a punch. No one really saw this coming, and we had recently been burned by the solar storm that was but wasn’t, i.e., the X-class event that never materialized. In any case, I saw the initial “hit” in the data, immediately jumped into the car, and drove eight hours north to get away from the horrible cloud cover over much of the Midwest Great Lakes region. I went to a location I had never been to before – which is always a gamble – but made it work somehow! Hunting for compositions in the dark is always a challenge. The amount of color detail in this image is amazing. I’ve never seen so much teal and purple. The whole night felt like a dream. Here’s to solar cycle 25!”
“Norrsken over Vintergatan ” by Stefano Astorri. Location: Swedish Lapland “Shooting the winter Milky Way and the aurora together was one of my 10 resolutions for 2021. I never imagined I would fulfill this one so soon. It was a freezing, windy night. I went to this location in the Swedish Lapland, where I hoped to see the Northern Lights rising right between two mountain peaks. When I was there, the “green lady” started dancing suddenly on my left while, right behind me, the Milky Way in her winter dress had joined the party. I was feeling very cold until it was replaced by pure excitement. I immediately re-adjusted the composition to include the red cabin in the shot as well. The result is a photo that actually merges 12 vertical shots at 14mm (around 270 degrees) to fully cover the two overlapping arches.”
“Santa’s Cabin” by Olli Sorvari. Location: Levi, Finland “I know the journey is often more important and memorable than the results, and after taking this picture, I think this was a trip to remember. It wasn’t a long hike, but when you don’t have snowshoes and you sink half a meter with every step you take, it kind of feels fifty times longer. The next time I go there, I’ll follow the skiing routes. The whole way up there was partly cloudy with no signs of the Northern Lights but finally, I could capture what I was looking for. I also managed to get some pretty decent shots of the winter Milky Way before the real show started, which was the cherry on the cake of this night.”
“When the stars align” by Joshua Snow. Location: Tombstone Territorial Park, Yukon, Canada “What a sight to behold. The incredible majesty of the aurora borealis. Lights that move and dance through space. Fleeting moments of vibrancy and shimmery glow. Life is much the same experience if you let it be. Learn to savor the little, passing moments. Learn to ebb and flow with space and time, and glow when the inspiration strikes. Wait for no one. Stop for nothing. Shine, dance, and shimmer your heart out because you only get one life. This image captures my week in Tombstone like no other ever will. After losing my dad in May and experiencing a full-on mental breakdown shortly before this trip, it felt like I was on a rollercoaster I didn’t know when would stop or even slow down. However, I am learning how to beat it back and slow the ride down. I am growing leaps and bounds toward the best version of me that I could have ever imagined just a year ago…This week in the mountains gave me a chance to heal, think, and feel more deeply than I have in a long time: slowing down to appreciate where I am in life, and reflect on what it is I want and need from it. Sometimes things can feel impossible. Hopeless. Scary. But sometimes, when things seem their most dim, their most hopeless, the universe reminds you that the sun will shine again. And how bright it shines on me now…”
“Volcanic Aurora Borealis” by Jeroen Van Nieuwenhove. Location: Geldingadalir, Iceland “One month into the eruption of the Geldingadalir volcano in Iceland, I was thinking a lot about whether it would be possible to photograph the aurora above the eruption. I tend to think of it as the holy grail of photography in Iceland. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime capture. That night seemed like one of the last opportunities we would get before the nights got too bright again. While the cloud coverage forecast was not looking particularly good, I decided to go up to the eruption anyway and try my luck. At around 11 PM, the clouds weren’t budging much so I decided to head back down the mountain. Sitting down while waiting in the harsh, freezing wind made my body temperature plummet. However, on the way back, everything changed. The clouds started opening up, and suddenly I noticed the aurora was faintly dancing above. I decided to put down my tripod and wait to see what, if anything, would happen. After about an hour, the lights suddenly became very active. I couldn’t believe my luck! I took shot after shot while just staring at the event that unfolded before me.”
GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) – Summer is here and we just can’t get enough of being in the water, the fresh air, and beautiful natural resources all around us. People have venturing to Northern Michigan in droves to find a getaway that’s filled with fun and beauty and just a short drive away!
When we travel, it’s nice knowing that we can drop our bags in one spot, and go exploring! You can do that at Shanty Creek Resort in Bellaire, which is situated in picturesque Antrim country, an area abundant with lakes and trails! It’s the perfect place to soak up the great outdoors and while you’re at the resort, have all the comforts of home.
Array Collective are announced as the winner of Turner Prize 2021, the leading international award for contemporary art, at Coventry Cathedral. Picture date: Wednesday December 1, 2021. The Turner Prize exhibition at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum is a highlight of the city’s year-long tenure as UK City of Culture. Photo credit should read: Matt Alexander/PA Wire
The Turner Prize 2021 has been awarded to Array Collective. The £25,000 prize was presented by Pauline Black, the lead singer of 2 Tone pioneers, The Selecter, during a live broadcast on the BBC. A further £10,000 was awarded to each of the other nominees. This year the Turner Prize exhibition is being held at the Herbert Art Gallery & Museum in Coventry as a highlight of its City of Culture year.
The jury awarded the prize to Array Collective for their hopeful and dynamic artwork which addresses urgent social and political issues affecting Northern Ireland with humour, seriousness and beauty. The jury were impressed with how Belfast-based Array Collective were able to translate their activism and values into the gallery environment, creating a welcoming, immersive and surprising exhibition. The jury commended all five nominees for their socially engaged artworks, and how they work closely and creatively with communities across the breadth of the UK. The collaborative practices highlighted in this year’s shortlist also reflect the solidarity and generosity demonstrated in response to our divided times.
Details and installation shots of The Druithaib’s Ball, by Array Collective. The Turner Prize 2021 Exhibition. The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum. Coventry. Photograph by David Levene 24/9/21.
One of the world’s best-known prizes for the visual arts, the Turner Prize aims to promote public debate around new developments in contemporary British art. For the first time, this year’s Turner Prize jury selected a shortlist consisting entirely of artist collectives and artist-run projects: Array Collective, Black Obsidian Sound System, Cooking Sections, Gentle/Radical and Project Art Works.
General views at The Herbert Art Gallery and Museum in Coventry as the Turner Prize Shortlist is announced. Picture date: Friday September 24, 2021. Photo credit: Doug Peters/ PA Wire
The members of the Turner Prize 2021 jury are Aaron Cezar, Director, Delfina Foundation; Kim McAleese, Programme Director, Grand Union; Russell Tovey, Actor; and Zoé Whitley, Director, Chisenhale Gallery. The jury is chaired by Alex Farquharson, Director, Tate Britain.
The exhibition is a highlight of Coventry’s UK City of Culture 2021 celebrations. Herbert Art Gallery and Museum champions Coventry’s culture, city and arts and is one of the UK’s leading regional museums. As part of its preparations for City of Culture 2021, the museum underwent a major redevelopment of its gallery spaces in anticipation of the Turner Prize exhibition. In parallel to the Turner Prize exhibition, Coventry also hosts ‘Coventry Biennial 2021: Hyper-Possible’ across Coventry and Warwickshire.
Turner Prize 2021 12th January 2022 Admission free Herbert Art Gallery & Museum, Jordan Well, Coventry CV1 5QP
About the artist
Array Collective is a group of 11 artists who create collaborative actions in response to socio-political issues affecting Northern Ireland. The collective has been working together more actively since 2016, motivated by the growing anger around human rights issues happening at the time. Their intention is to reclaim and review the dominant ideas about religio-ethnic identity in Northern Ireland. Working as constituents or allies of the communities they protest with and make art about, Array Collective aims to create a new mythology for the growing number of people who do not prescribe to embedded sectarian dichotomies.
Recent initiatives and works include: JerwoodCollaborate!, Jerwood Arts, London (2019), a-n Artists Council’s Artists Make Change (2020), as well as organising projects in response to issues such as queer liberation, abortion rights, mental health, gentrification, eco-politics, social welfare and Northern Ireland’s fractured past.
Array Collective playfully use performance, protest, photography, print, installation and video. They work with a range of other creative people and organisations to create a combination of artistic expression, direct action and public interventions in the city and online. Their recent project As Others See Us (2019), for example, centred on three fictional characters drawn from the pre-Christian myths and folklore of ancient Ireland: ‘Ban Bidh: The Sacred Cow’, ‘An Scáth Fada: The Long Shadow’ and ‘An Mór Ríoghain: The Morrigan’. These characters have since shape-shifted through crowds at Belfast Pride and up the banks of the River Thames in a series of interventions and performance protests.
Array Collective was nominated for their use of DIY sensibility to tackle issues facing Northern Ireland. The jury commended recent projects, including public artworks in support of the decriminalisation of abortion, challenging legislative discrimination of the queer community in Northern Ireland, and participation in the group exhibition Jerwood Collaborate! in London in late 2019.
Array Collective comprises: Sighle Bhreathnach-Cashell, Sinéad Bhreathnach-Cashell, Jane Butler, Alessia Cargnelli, Emma Campbell, Mitch Conlon, Clodagh Lavelle, Grace McMurray, Stephen Millar, Laura O’Connor and Thomas Wells. The collective is based and predominantly works in Belfast. arraystudiosbelfast.com
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Mark Westall
Mark Westall is the Founder and Editor of FAD magazine Founder and co-publisher of Art of Conversation and founder of the platform @worldoffad
