A collage of 483 images – each taken at sunrise in Plymouth for every day of the UK’s COVID-19 restrictions – will sit at the heart of a new exhibition.
Heidi Morstang: Field Observations showcases the work of
Dr Heidi Morstang
, Associate Professor in Photography at the University of Plymouth and an award-winning photographer and filmmaker.
Featuring photographs and films created over the past two decades, the works are an observation of a fragile natural environment, and the increasing changes in the climate that has now become a global emergency.
The exhibition includes art works made in the Arctic featuring glaciers, boreal forests, rapid light changes between polar night and day, and butterflies in the Sierra Nevada mountains.
There are also works showing geoscientists searching for the ancient scars of earthquakes, scientists who have dedicated their lives to the study of climate change, and the imposing tunnels of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
Amid those visions from across the world is Himmelbilder / Skies of Dawn – a five-metre collage of images taken much closer to home, from Dr Morstang’s garden in Plymouth, during 2020 and 2021.
It includes 69 columns of seven pictures, one column for each week that the UK lived under restrictions, and focuses solely on the sky as it appeared on each of those 483 days.