A wide, muddy wetland plain with branching, water-filled channels weave toward distant low hills, with pale grey patches of ground and a cloudy sky above.

Iceland series #48, #53, #56, #64 2005

Olafur Eliasson’s Iceland series of photographs is expansive and ongoing. These images from the series were taken along the Goose Lake Trail (Gæsavatnaleið). We see quicksilver channels of water weaving their way over dark brown sand and gravel towards a larger river. Against these colours, the light and clouds are particularly dramatic.

‘Iceland is made of a highland, where nobody lives,’ says Eliasson, ‘and a lowland, and water runs from the highland to the lowland and on into rivers and the ocean. It carves these canyons into the mountains with these incredible riverbeds.’ The landscape and light are spectacular but also challenging to navigate.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Low/no vision audio description

0:00

The Iceland series consists of four large colour photographs, each measuring 60 by 90 centimetres. Displayed in a single horizontal row on the gallery wall, the works are evenly spaced, giving the series a balanced rhythm and inviting viewers to not only read the sequence from left to right but also to consider the images on their own. Each photograph was taken in 2005 during a trip Eliasson took along the Goose Lake Trail (Gæsavatnaleið), and together the four works depict the effects of the light and atmosphere upon Iceland’s dramatic landscape.

The photograph on the far left shows a dark volcanic plain, its surface etched with ridges and patterns. In the distance, low mountains are partly veiled by mist creeping down from a cloudy sky. The next photograph captures a braided river system, pale channels of water cutting through ochre and brown earth, with distant ridges on the horizon. The third image presents a flat expanse of volcanic sand beneath a sky heavy with low-hanging clouds, a solitary mountain visible in the distance. And the fourth, final photograph depicts another sand plain streaked with pale sediment, its horizon line softened under diffuse light.

Far from merely documenting the Icelandic landscape, these images reflect on our relationship with nature, the physical space in which we exist and the body’s felt motion through space. Their uniform presentation emphasises both the individuality of each image and their shared atmosphere of vastness, solitude and shifting terrain.

– QAGOMA

A wide expanse of dark, granular ground scattered with small rocks extends toward low, cloud-covered hills beneath a dense grey sky.

A broad expanse of dark, rippled earth and silt extends toward a low, rounded hill under a cloudy sky, with multitudinous thin water channels and scattered grey patches visible across the barren, wetland terrain.

Room: ‘Iceland’

Olafur Eliasson returns regularly to Iceland. Although now based in Berlin, he was born in Copenhagen to Icelandic parents. As a child, he would spend summers with his grandparents near Reykjavík. Moving between these different landscapes has shaped his artistic practice in profound ways. Experiencing such distinct ways of life, qualities of place and phenomena of light, was critical in shaping his focus on how we perceive and understand the world. Moving from place to place, this effect is heightened: ‘When I looked at a shadow or at melting ice, I wanted to document something I could see, but others might not register,’ he says. ‘For my Icelandic family and friends there was no need to tell a story they already knew.’

Eliasson pays close attention to his surroundings. In his photographs, we see an alertness to different qualities of light and landscape, time and its rhythms. We also see a focus on how people orient themselves and adapt to the country’s harsh climate. The Hekla twilight series 2006 captures subtle changes of light and colour as dusk falls over the snow-covered mountain. We explore a landscape of rivers shaped by glacial meltwater, snow-capped plateaus and tumbling waterfalls through Eliasson’s eyes and camera lens. A rainbow appears cradled by the landscape itself at the base of a waterfall, then is painstakingly recreated in thin veils of watercolour. From a small piece of Icelandic lava rock, Eliasson constructs a model planet, lit by a hidden sun.

– Geraldine Kirrihi Barlow

Iceland series #48, #53, #56, #64 2005

Room: ‘Iceland’

Other works from ‘Iceland’:

Room: ‘Iceland’

Other works from ‘Iceland’: