Art and Writing: Coastal Erosion and the Sublime

The word “sublime” often gets used to mean beautiful, but originally it was something immeasurably awe-inspiring rather than just pretty. In fact, it didn’t have to be beautiful at all. In the 18th century, the term was particularly employed to describe landscapes that inspired fear, such as huge, jagged mountains or standing on the edge of a crumbling cliff in a storm, with jagged rocks below.

That’s the meaning used in the description of an exhibition currenly on at Eastbourne’s Towner Gallery. Emma Stibbon’s Melting Ice – Rising Tides displays her paintings of polar glaciers and melting ice-sheets next to her pictures of coastal erosion along England’s Sussex coast. She works mainly outdoors, recording moments when waves crash, cliff faces collapse, and massive blocks of frozen water break away and tumble into the sea. 

As it say on the Towner website, her work is: “provoked by the wonder and drama of nature but underpinned by contemporary anxieties about our precarious future.”

My photos, above and to the right, don’t do the exhibition justice. Emma Stibbon’s work is awe-inspiring, scary, yet also starkly beautiful – genuinely sublime. Rather than simply being a recording of scary landscapes in the 18th century sense, there’s environmental horror here too. It shows how much of our much-loved coastline we are losing and will continue to lose.

I found the exhibition particularly moving because it shows places in and near Eastbourne I’ve visited and love. Some have already disappeared due to erosion. The steps to Hope Gap are no longer accessible, and the cafe on the clifff at Birling Gap has had to be demolished. More needs to be done to record places like this for posterity, as well as acting to preserve the cliffs and beaches.

However, this exhibition is far more than another attempt to shock us into reducing our use of oil and gas, it’s a brilliant display of art. Melting Ice – Rising Tides is on until 15 September at The Towner, Devonshire Park, College Road, Eastbourne, BN21 4JJ. It is free to enter, but you can book tickets in advance. 

My Writing: Erosion

I also felt a personal resonance with Emma Stibbon’s art, because my own Gothic novel, Erosion, is set on the crumbling coast of southern England. In it, cliff erosion causes an ancient grave to be revealed and the characters in the book decide to do a seance to contact the spirit of the bones they find there. It is set at the time of the Great Storm of 1987, which could certainly be described as sublime.

Here’s where you can find Erosion and my other books

• My publisher is Moon Books, an imprint of Collective Ink. You can see Erosion on the website via this link: https://www.collectiveinkbooks.com/moon-books/our-books/erosion-novel
• You can get signed copies at Treadwell’s Bookshop 33 Store Street, Bloomsbury London, WC1E 7BS www.treadwells-london.com/ .
• Erosion can be also be viewed on Amazon. 

(Note: I earn commission from some links.)

Other previous related posts
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2024/04/sea-magic-extract-from-erosion-my.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2021/06/world-oceans-day-making-promise-to.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2024/04/pagan-eye-lamassu-of-nineveh-goes-on.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2023/07/pagan-eye-sacred-spring-on-sussex-beach.html
http://www.badwitch.co.uk/2023/05/walking-art-of-tides-stones-god-of-sea.html

To read more posts like this visit A Bad Witch’s Blog at www.badwitch.co.uk