An outdoor projection animated the exterior wall of Pushkin House on Bloomsbury Square on the opening night of Icebreaker Dreaming, a new solo exhibition by the artist Ruth Maclennan. The exhibition explores the Russian Arctic, as a place to live in, to travel through, to project onto, to control and exploit for its natural resources, in the context of the climate emergency. 

Inside the building an immersive installation traces journeys that Maclennan has taken, and imagined in the Arctic region. It brings together newly commissioned films, a drawing, photographs and found objects. 

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a film, Cloudberries, recently premiered at the BFI London Film Festival. The film was shot in Arctic Russia, on the Kola Peninsula, along the so-called Northern Sea Route during the hottest summer on record. It was filmed in a small fishing village made up of an old and a new settlement. The village has taken on geopolitical significance because it is situated at the nearest point on land to the Shtokman gas field, which is one of the largest natural gas fields in the world. 

The Icebreaker is a phantom as well as a central figure of the exhibition. For Russia, as it was for the Soviet Union, the icebreaker is a symbol of heroism and the frontier – an object of brute strength encapsulating economic, political, and military strategy. It transforms ecologies on land and at sea, as well as in the minds of those who encounter it. The icebreaker-building programme is a central part of Russia’s policy to rapidly develop the Northern Sea Route along Russia’s Arctic coastline between Asia and Europe.   

‘The icebreaker is the future speeded up, as polar ice melts and icebreakers open up sea routes and fossil fuel extraction. The ship helps bring about its own obsolescence. This exhibition uncovers heroic, tragic, comic, and poetic stories of the icebreaker. The exhibition gives voice to people who call the Arctic home, and the forces, ideas and events that resist the world view the icebreaker represents.’ Ruth Maclennan

Maclennan’s exhibition, Icebreaker Dreaming, is part of a wider movement to undo prevailing ‘mid-latitude’ clichés of the Arctic seen from afar as untouched pristine nature, with polar bears, idealised or demoralised indigenous peoples, and memories of brave explorers sent to conquer the elements and claim this terra nullius.

The exhibition shows how important the Arctic has been and still is as both a place and an idea, for Russia: for its enormous natural resources, its geographical location, and for the less obvious role the Arctic plays in defining Russia’s place in the world. The exhibition looks at how these meanings are evolving in the context of the current climate emergency.

During the exhibition, Pushkin House is a stage and a meeting place for exhibiting, describing and interpreting what is going on and what is at stake in the Arctic region today. A series of talks, discussions and performances at Pushkin House will expand on the themes of the exhibition and questions raised by its artworks. Speakers include Michael Bravo of the Scott Polar Research Institute at Cambridge and author of North Pole: Nature and Culture; Esther Leslie, author of Liquid Crystals: The Science and Art of a Fluid Form, and Professor of Political Aesthetics at Birkbeck, University of London; Gareth Evans, writer and film producer; author Charlotte Moore; and Russian actress Natalia Maeva. 

Ruth Maclennan studied Russian from the age of twelve and read Modern Languages at Cambridge University before going to art school. She lived in Moscow for a year as an undergraduate, living and working with artists as the country began to fall apart. Icebreaker Dreaming continues Maclennan’s fieldwork in the Russian Arctic. Through this work she reflects on what climate change means on the ground, and how the geopolitical transformations associated with climate change are being experienced and expressed.

Ruth Maclennan’s work includes films, video installations, photography, bookworks, performance and curatorial projects. Solo exhibitions and commissions include Anarcadia for FVU and John Hansard Gallery, which toured nationally and to international film festivals, The Faces They Have Vanished, ICIA and James Hockey Gallery supported by a Joanna Drew Award. Her interdisciplinary, collaborative projects include State of Mind at London School of Economics (Wellcome Trust, ACE funded), and Leverhulme residency in the LSE Archives, and the site-based project, Archway Polytechnic (www.archwaypolytechnic.org). Group exhibitions include Somewhere Becoming Sea (FVU, Hull City of Culture), Interspecies (Arts Catalyst, Cornerhouse), Central Asian Project (Cornerhouse, SPACE), The Body. The Ruin. (Ian Potter Museum, Melbourne). Her work has been exhibited widely in Europe, USA, Japan, Australia and Central Asia, Korea and Taiwan. Her work is held in public and private collections, including Wellcome Collection and Centre Pasqu’Art, Biel. She has a PhD (RCA), MFA (Goldsmiths), and MA (Cambridge). Her work is included in numerous monographs and she has produced several bookworks. LUX Artists’ Moving Image distributes her films.

Ruth Maclennan is currently Research Associate at Scott Polar Institute, Cambridge University. She also teaches Moving Image at Central Saint Martins and Open College of the Arts.