One of Western Australia’s most talented young artists who visited the North Pole for inspiration says the freezing wasteland isn’t too different to her home State. Melissa Clements embarked on the remarkable journey to Longyearbyen in Svalbard in April, the world’s northernmost settlement, after she pitched a creative development trip to the Melbourne-based Blackbird Foundation. Spending 10 days in the remote Arctic town, the 25-year-old said she felt like she was “on the edge of the world” when she went about collecting inspiration for a solo exhibition.
“It’s so incredibly remote, it’s a wild, alien landscape but it had a familiarity to it as well being from Perth which is also an isolated city,” she said. “The desert reminded me of some of the outback landscapes in WA just covered in snow. “I felt so excited and grateful, I’m so aware of how lucky I am to have this unique experience, most of the visitors to Svalbard are science researchers if not wealthy tourists, so I never dreamed I’d get the opportunity to go.
” Ms Clements also encountered a polar bear on her first time travelling outside the Svalbard settlement in a sighting locals said was extremely rare. On a 185km snowmobile expedition to the east coast of Spitzbergen, the giant marine mammal crossed Ms Clements and her tour group’s track. “It was about 250m away, the guides went into survival mode.
They also have to carry rifles if leaving the main settlement, and we had to divert o.