Sarah Gerats
ART and CLIMATE
Sunday March 9, 2-4pm, The Alt Hotel (Cyan Room), St. John’s
An art and science based panel discussion with renowned Arctic/Antarctic guide and Interdisciplinary artist Sarah Gerats from Svalbard (Arctic Circle), with local heroes Bill Montevecchi, Holly Hogan and Angela Antle. More info and bios below.
Also on Sunday March 9 in the Cyan room at the Alt Hotel -
10 - 11:30am - Quiet room with a view
An open invitation to artists and community members who would enjoy having quiet time in this room as it looks out to the sea and the hills. Lie on the floor, read, write, draw, chat. Grab a coffee or tea at the Terre Cafe and enjoy the space and view.
12 - 1pm - Moving form your Cellular Body
Movement and sensory exploration led by Sarah Joy Stoker, open to all adults ages, abilities, and persons with interest and inclination. This improvisational moving exploratory session will encourage deep sensing and listening of the self and physical body as well as a wide spectrum of noticing of that outside the body – the world and space around us. With gentle and affectionate nods to Skinner Release technique, the process work of Deborah Hay, and decades worth of accumulated discovery, Stoker will guide participants through a full range of possibilities of connection for themselves, their bodies, their imaginations and hopefully their hearts.
2 - 4 - Art and Climate Panel - Sarah Gerats (Svalbard), with local heroes Bill Montevecchi, Holly Hogan and Angela Antle. Bios below.
5 - 7 - Dance Party!
In these heavy times it is important to finds ways to let go and free our worrying
minds, to find ways to feel and experience joy. It is true resistance.
DJ CLEO LEIGH - alcohol free.
Sunday, March 16, 1 - 3pm, The Old College Hospital, Norris Point - Sarah Joy Stoker and Sarah Gerats presentations and artists talks as part of, Connecting Place, Art, and Science: Spruce Budworm and its Impacts.
This is a multi-year project exploring how recent spruce budworm (SBW) outbreaks are shaping people's cultural, spiritual, and recreational connections to Gros Morne National Park—a framework known as Cultural, Spiritual and Recreational Ecosystem Services (CSR-ES). This project brings together artists, scientists, and community members through a series of residencies in Norris Point over 2024 to 2026. The project is led by co-PIs Drs. Rachel Jekanowski and Camille Ouellet Dallaire (Memorial University - Grenfell Campus) and funded by Natural Resources Canada.
Saturday, March 22, 2 - 3:30pm, Grenfell Art Gallery, Corner Brook - Sarah Gerats Artist Talk and Presentation
Sarah Gerats as guide on Arctic Circle Residence, Svalbard. Image by Sarah Joy Stoker, May 2023
Bill Montevecchi
Bill Montevecchi is a Professor Emeritus and John Lewis Paton Distinguished University Professor in Psychology, Biology, and Ocean Sciences at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. He and his students investigate seabird responses and resilience to environmental change and perturbation. They engage environmental assessments and use science-based evidence to evaluate, design and mitigate government and corporate regulatory processes.
Holly Hogan
Holly Hogan is an award winning writer and seabird biologist. During her career as a scientist, she has spent over a thousand days at sea conducting marine wildlife surveys and providing educational programming with expedition teams. Her work has taken her to the Arctic and Antarctic Oceans, and every latitude in between. She has been interviewed for CBC Radio, appears in a National Film Board series called Ocean School, and provided expertise on seabirds and the impact of marine plastic for the award-winning documentary Hell or Clean Water (2021). Her book Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist was a finalist for the 2023 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award, and the 2024 Lane Anderson Award for the best science writing in Canada; was short-listed for the 2023 Governor-General’s Award for non-fiction and is the winner of the 2023 BMO Winterset Award. Holly lives in St. John’s, NL.
Angela Antle
Angela Antle is the 2025 Rachel Carson Writer in Residence at Germany’s LMU, a multi-disciplinary artist, documentary-maker, interdisciplinary phd candidate (Memorial University) and a member of Norway’s Empowered Futures: A Global Research School Navigating the Social and Environmental Controversies of Low-Carbon Energy Transitions.
ART and CLIMATE
An art and science based panel discussion with renowned Arctic/Antarctic guide and Interdisciplinary artist Sarah Gerats from Svalbard (Arctic Circle), with local heroes Bill Montevecchi, Holly Hogan and Angela Antle.
The Alt Hotel – Cyan Room, Sunday March 9, 2-4pm
Sarah Gerats (NL)
Lives and works on Spitsbergen (NO)
From the Netherlands, Sarah Gerats studied art at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy Amsterdam, the Kuvataideakatemia Helsinki and completed her studies in 2011 with a postgraduate at the Higher Institute for Fine Art in Ghent, Belgium. Sarah’s work is strongly defined by the place where she lives. In 2012 Sarah accidentally moved to Spitsbergen/Svalbard, an archipelago at 78 degrees North, where she has been living and working since. She combines her artistic practice with working on tall ships as a guide, both in the far North and the deep South. This work gives her the possibility to develop a long term relationship to the Polar regions, and to work in seemingly inaccessible places. She works with photo, video, performance, stories and rumors. Her visual works are staged situations, recorded by a camera. She usually works alone, out in nature, using a tripod and a timer. She often appears in her own work, incorporating her body into the environment, reacting to her surroundings. Her performative actions search for a strong female presence in the rapidly changing high North.
During her time in Newfoundland this March, Sarah Gerats will present artist talks in various regions and communities, sharing her perspective on life in the fastest-warming town on Earth. Through her artistic work, Sarah will tell about her experiences of the rapidly changing Arctic landscape and its impact on the small community on Spitsbergen/Svalbard. Sarah's presentation will feature her photography-based works, videos, and accounts of her durational performances, which often involve her immersing herself in the Arctic environment. She will also highlight the work of Stein Henningsen, a fellow Svalbard-based performance artist. Having worked with numerous artists visiting Svalbard, Sarah will discuss how artistic approaches have evolved in response to the changing environment. A key question for her is the role of art as a witness to the changing landscape, and how art can be valuable in documenting and raising awareness. Throughout her presenttaions, Sarah will explore themes of social sustainability in small communities and the question of who it is that can tell these stories. During her time in Newfoundland Sarah will focus on the parallels and differences between her home in the high Arctic and the maritime North of Newfoundland, where she will be spending the Month of March.
Funding support for this project is from ArtsNL.
Sarah Joy Stoker
Interdisciplinary artist, Sarah Joy Stoker’s work is rooted in dance, performance, video, photography and installation and has always been art-for-action based. For three decades her practice has been driven by the devastating lack of ecological care, health, and justice shown to this planet due to such a dramatic disconnect from nature fuelled by our colonial past and present. Her work spans, They cut down trees so you can wipe your ass and blow your nose with the softest tissues ever (1999), From your head down to your feet (2002), Le Bordel (2003), Rocks on (2005), Sapiens lay here (2007), When the birds fly happy (2011), The worth of (2014), Our heart breaks (2018), film adaptation, Once we were trees (2019), Fort/tress (2020), Stay Staying/Repeat Offenders (2024) and, film Woven Prayers on Melting Ice, photographic series, Walking the Retreat of a Glacier, and performance Pixel Bear, all generated during time spent in the Arctic Circle in April 2023. Her most recent endeavour is leanto (.ca). Sarah holds firm that art is an active force in life and should be used as a vehicle for action.
