There is a wonderful Icelandic saying.
To lay your head in the water
Að leggja höfuðið í bleyti
It means to think about something deeply, to find a new way to do things.
There's something about this implied act of self-baptism that resonates, an opportunity to start over, to leave behind the past and begin anew.
It was far too cold to lie down in the water in Iceland, but I walked across a frozen glacial lake to the foot of Mýrdalsjökull and listened to the sounds of the ice.
It did feel transcendent like I was paying homage to a Goddess.
Sitting on active volcanos, the ice constantly shifts by the tiniest of increments, and huge thin towers of ice teeter metres above their frozen roots.
The sound as one cracks and topples is beautiful, powerful and eerie. The movement creating a variety of creaks, groans, and thumps that sends blocks of the brightest blue, splintering across the surface of the frozen water.
The noise hits you in the solar plexus, elemental - part of an ancient mysterious, dialect, as you secretly pray that the ice will hold under your feet.
I spent a day recording the sounds and filming the trapped bubbles in the beached icebergs. These bubbles, trapped in the ice when they coalesced, are sublime, so incredibly beautiful.
They look like the beginning of stars.
I can understand why ice is such a powerful symbol of beauty and frailty.
"Winter makes things visible. It's a magnifying glass for a certain kind of truth."
Ali Smith, Winter
I couldn't help but marvel at the profound resonance between Smith's words and the internal architecture of the glaciers. The films capture the intricate details, the delicate dance of light reflecting off the frozen surface, the ethereal hues of blue and white.
I am making a film for my exhibition at Oriel Davies from the footage and audio recordings I captured in January. It will be so interesting to see the images projected at the height of Summer here in Wales.