Sydney Ice Bear in perspective

It has been a phenomenal week, with the Sydney Ice Bear’s impact being much greater than we ever thought possible.

To recap, we craned it into position at 2.30am last Friday morning:

Started carving at 7.30am:

And completed carving at 12.30pm that day:

Each night it has been complemented by the Vivid Festival’s illumination of Customs House, seen well on this 360 degree image of the ice bear in the middle of the Customs House forecourt.

Then on Sunday as the ice bear started melting we had a public rally at which Katie Noonan performed:

Followed by an ice carving masterclass on Monday:

The story has gone round the world from the Times of India to Xinhua Newsagency - see the clip here.

I am still trying to digest how we have achieved so much media and public attention, but it appears to be a mix of the incredibly power of this art installation and the skill of the media and marketing company Momentum2.

Catch it if you can before it leaves Customs House on Saturday.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

The Sydney Ice Bear is arriving tomorrow

The Sydney Ice Bear is finally about to happen tomorrow, Friday June 3rd! I first came across this wonderful project in late 2009 when my sculptor friend Mark Coreth was developing it for the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December of that year. It ended up being the centrepiece of the WWF exhibit there and seemed to be the back drop to almost every news story from the Summit. Thence to Trafalgar Square in London, and Toronto, Montréal and Manchester.

Mark’s concept, drawn from watching polar bears in the wild in Canada, was to create an ice sculpture that people could touch, thus allowing them to metaphorically touch the Arctic, feel the problem of climate change, and be inspired to become part of the solution. So tomorrow a block of ice, weighing 9 tonnes and containing frozen in it the bronze skeleton of a polar bear, will be placed in Customs House Square in Sydney. From 7am Mark and his team will carve it into the shape of a polar bear, which will take about 4 hours.

With the inconclusive result of Copenhagen, the heart went out of the climate change debate, and getting funding for such a project proved nigh impossible in Australia. So it’s been fantastic to have found the wholehearted support of Rob Purves and the Purves Environmental Fund to make this happen. Rob has been tireless in his efforts to promote this project, working with Momentum2 to raise funds off the back of it for WWF- Australia, 1millionwomen and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition. It’s a complete eye opener how this world of not-for profit fund raising around environmental issues works, I can tell you!

Tomorrow I’ll post some pictures of the bear arriving and being carved.

But for today check out this promo the National Geographic have done for us, and if you are in Sydney do come on down to see the Sydney Ice Bear at Customs House.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

The Ice Bear cometh to Sydney

As a conservator I have long been of the view that the main purpose of our work is not the conservation of artworks and objects per se, but rather providing through our conservation work the ability for those items to tell their stories. So it is not a long leap to my latest project, the Sydney Ice Bear Project, which uses an artwork to metaphorically tell a massive story, namely the impact of climate change on the environment,

I first met Mark Coreth, the artist behind the Ice Bear Project, four years ago, although I had been aware of his work as one of the UK’s preeminent animal sculptors for some time. A number of his wonderful life size animal bronzes are in private collections in Australia, which we look after. Mark has long been a keen environmentalist, but a visit to Baffin Island to sculpt polar bears led him to want to do more to promote awareness of their plight.

So he came up with the concept of creating a polar bear in ice, and then letting it melt to reveal a bronze skeleton as a metaphor for the melting ice caps and the impact on the polar bears, and indeed more broadly on our planet.

The first ice bear was a centrepiece of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) stand at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in 2009, with the second following in Trafalgar Square, London.  A travelling ice bear was carved in early 2010 in Quebec, before moving to Ottawa and finally Montreal where it melted, and then another in Toronto in June last year. The latest was carved on 31 March in Manchester. Check out this video from the BBC of last week's carving.  The Ice Bear is a highly dramatic artwork, and has received much media attention at each venue.

Anyway, I have been keen to see the Ice Bear in Australia ever since I heard about it. The Ice Bear team have been working to bring it here for the past year, and finally we have the funding for it to take place around World Environment Day on June 5th on the forecourt of the Customs House, Sydney.

Mark will be carving the ice bear over 6 hours from dawn on Thursday June 2nd and the bear will then start melting (we reckon it will take 4-5 days at that time of year) with a major public event around the melting sculpture to be held on Sunday June 5th involving some leading climate change experts. WWF, 1millionwomen and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition will all be project partners.

The frozen ice bear, encased in a large box and weighing over 9 tonnes, actually arrived in Sydney late last year, and has been in cold storage since then.  International Conservation Services are managing the logistics for the Ice Bear Project in Sydney, so we shall be placing it in the forecourt pre-dawn on June 2nd ready for Mark and his team to carve away. I will keep you posted on progress as the time nears.  Put the dates in your diary now, and come and see it if you are in town.

Julian Bickersteth
Managing Director
internationalconservationservices

A non-political project, Ice Bear made its world debut at the Copenhagen Climate Summit in December 2009, attracting global attention.  Sydney Ice Bear will encourage the public to visit and touch the sculpture and learn more about the impacts of climate change.  It will be on display from Thursday 2 June to Friday 10 June 2011.

Sydney Ice Bear has been made possible with the support of the Purves Environmental Fund.  Additional support has been provided by the City of Sydney, public and fine art conservators International Conservation Services and social marketing and communications agency Momentum2, as well as Aurora Expeditions.  WWF Australia, 1millionwomen and AYCC are partners in the project, and all funds raised locally will go to support these partner organisations.