Drink in the Beauty was the first show to celebrate GoMA’s 25th anniversary year and has been extended now until 22 May 2022. The exhibition explores representations of landscape, geology and human aspirations by female artists who have documented and recorded the natural environment with a focus upon the current pressing issue of climate change. The film Center for Short Lived Phenomena (1973/2005) and The Library (2013) by Ilana Halperin joined the exhibition recently and are shown in the film space until the exhibition closes.

Ilana Halperin is currently based between Glasgow and the Isle of Bute. Her work delves into the relationship between geology and daily life. She combines fieldwork in diverse locations – on volcanoes in Hawaii, caves in France, geothermal springs in Japan – and in museums, archives and laboratories, with an active studio-based practice. Her work has featured in solo exhibitions worldwide including Berliner Medizinhistorisches Museum der Charité, Artists Space in New York and the Manchester Museum. 

The Center for Short Lived Phenomena is inspired by the archival footage of the eruption of a volcano named Eldfell on Heimaey, Iceland in 1973, the same year Halperin was born. The original documentation of the Eldfell eruption was kindly loaned to Halperin by Bob Citron and his colleagues, the primary investigators on the fieldwork session who shot the breathtaking footage, allowing Halperin to make a narrative edit of the original footage, marking this personal connection to the volcano.

The Library is a Super 8 film shot over one year in various locations, including en-route to Heimaey, the site of the Eldfell volcanic eruption in 1973, a Marble quarry near Assynt and in Inverness-shire during a mineral prospecting session in a disused mica mine. The film was commissioned by National Museum of Scotland as part of Halperin’s exhibition The Library there in 2013. The Library is on loan to GoMA courtesy of the artist and Patricia Fleming Gallery, Glasgow.

In addition to these two films, Halperin’s photography works Victoria Park (2003), Krafla volcano fissure row (2003) and later that same day (2003) are also currently displayed in Drink in the Beauty. Through Halperin’s works, we are reminded of our presence in geological time. All of these works demonstrate how the artist captures and distills moments in time, and show the connections between personal experience and the natural processes occurring imperceptibly around us. In Drink in the Beauty, the artists find a means of relating to the world around themselves through art. The quiet and everyday act of being present in landscapes has become extraordinary and elicits emotional responses, inspiring us to delve deeper into the concerns of the changing environment around us.