“Unlike days of old when explorers spent most of their time figuring out where they were, we knew exactly where we were at every moment. It was where we were going next and how long it would take to exit the ice that eluded us.”

A LIMITED EDITION PUBLICATION

Three booklets packages in a letterpress printed box, with three original prints enclosed.

Limited to 50.

Signed and numbered by the author

The three booklets are: Drift Drawings, Snow Walks, and Ten Till Two

From September 2007 to February 2008 Ellie Ga was the sole artist-in-residence aboard Tara, a two-mast aluminum sailboat locked drifting in the pack ice near the North Pole. Three Arctic Booklets is part of Ellie Ga’s multi-media project based on her experience of living in the polar night with nine others on the frozen Arctic ocean with no control over their immediate future.

Three Arctic Booklets represent three ways of mapping the boat’s movement. Drift Drawings is a bird’s eye view: the meandering path of the boat’s drift over long periods of time. Snow Walks (Log of Limits), made up of charcoal drawings and their progressive xerox degradations, represents the limits of local movement as the ice expands and contracts. Ten Till Two (10:10) is a text made from transcriptions of interviews with the crew as they drew maps of their immediate surroundings, the constantly changing ice around the Tara.