| "Lost Washers II" |
| by Mike Clements |
| Digital and embossing |
| 210 x 210mm |
| edition of 35 @ £35 each |
The first version of "Lost Washers" involved re-cycling as a fine art printmaking plate, washers I’d found discarded on pavements and in gutters. The prints in that limited edition of 35 recorded the places and dates I had found the various washers.
By contrast, for this print, "Lost Washers II", I have not visited the places named in the print, all of which are in Antarctica. But I have continued to find abandoned washers in the street as I have gone about daily life. They are quite common if you look - they just seem to resist all street-sweeping efforts. Each time I found a washer, I logged on to one of the many websites about Antarctica and learned about a new place there. It became a way of building up my knowledge of Antarctica. The washers thus became linked with the places named in the limited edition of 35 blind embossed prints. The full list is below.
: a horseshoe shaped island that is much visited by tourist ships. It is the top of an underwater volcano that last erupted in 1970.Deception Island
Vostok Station: became officially the coldest place on the surface of Earth on July 21 1983, when scientists at the Russian Antarctic research base recorded a temperature of -89.2°C
Wilkes Land: the site of Antarctica’s thickest ice, 4.8km deep, about as deep as the Alps are high.
Ross Ice Shelf: is the largest of Antarctica’s glaciers, about the size of France.
Vinson Massif: Antarctica’s highest point, 4,897metresabove sea level.
Nunataks: small areas of rock emerging above ice sheets and glaciers. They are isolated from the main mountains and are often easier to access, making them particularly useful to geologists.
McMurdo Sound: The jumping off point for many of the early polar explorers, including Scott and Shackleton. Now the site of the largest (American) Antarctic research station and a harbour used by re-supply ships.
Commonwealth Bay: named after the Commonwealth of Australia, not the more familiar Commonwealth of Nations composed mainly of former British colonies. Australian explorers landed here.
Lake Vostok: In 1996, a lake was discovered under the glacier. There is some evidence that Lake Vostok's waters, believed to have been sealed off for at least 500,000 years, may contain microbial life. If confirmed. It would strengthen the argument for the possibility of life on Jupiter’s moon, Europa, which has similar sealed lakes.
Mount Erebus: on Ross Island is the southernmost active volcano.
Beardmore Glacier: Low-grade coal has been identified here and in other parts of the Transantarctic Mountains. Exploitation of all mineral resources is banned until 2048 by the Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty.
Trident Peak: gets its name from having three summits.
Queen Elizabeth Range: part of the Transantarctic Mountains dividing West Antarctica from East Antarctica.
Gondwana: more than 170 million years ago, Antarctica was part of the Gondwana supercontinent, which gradually broke apart. Antarctica as we know it today was formed around 25 million years ago.
Montagu Island: one of the South Sandwich Islands. A volcanic eruption here in 2005 created 9 square km of new land.
Rothera Station: on Adelaide Island is one of the British Antarctic Survey’s bases. It has accommodation for 120 people and a gravel runway from which aircraft transport scientists into the field.
Mike Clements is printmaking tutor at The Sidney Nolan Trust, based near Presteigne in the unspoilt Border Marches area between Wales and England.