Thank you for joining us for Insolations and the solar eclipse

Thank you to everyone who joined us yesterday for Jessica MacMillan’s one-night exhibition Insolations, her artist talk, and our solar eclipse viewing.

After a day of watching an uncertain weather forecast, nature was kind to us in Svalbard. The clouds parted just in time to give us an incredible view of the partial solar eclipse, which reached around 90% coverage over Longyearbyen.

Earlier in the evening, Jessica presented works created during her second residency at Artica Svalbard. Insolations is an ongoing sculpture series in which spherical glass lenses are placed into wooden bowls and left outside for set periods of time. As the sun moves across the sky, its light is focused through the lens, burning a path into the wood.

Each bowl becomes a record of the movement and strength of the sun. The angle and length of the burn reflects the latitude at which it was made, while passing clouds create patterns, interruptions and pauses in the line. The title Insolations refers to the amount of solar radiation received from the sun, with each bowl recording the particular conditions of a single day through glass, wood, weather and sunlight.

For the eclipse, Jessica placed bowls on a hilltop near the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, allowing the changing light of the two-hour eclipse to become part of the work.

Jessica MacMillan is an artist and amateur astronomer based in Oslo whose practice spans sculpture, installation, 3D animation and light. Her work explores astronomy, planetary science and deep time, often using everyday objects and optical instruments to connect our daily lives with the vast cosmic scales that surround us.

This is Jessica’s second residency with Artica, following her first stay in 2021, supported through a nomination by the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA). During that residency she developed Time Line, a large-scale outdoor light work using a high-powered green laser to interact with the stars during the polar night.

A huge thank you to Jessica for sharing her work and research with us, and to everyone who came along to the exhibition, talk and joined us on the hilltop for a very special Svalbard evening.