23 October - 22 November 2025

Emma Stibbon

Melting Ice | Rising Tides
    "I’m increasingly aware that I am living through a time of unprecedented change and that we need to understand what we are doing, and what we stand to lose.”

    This October, Cristea Roberts Gallery will open Melting Ice | Rising Tides, a solo exhibition by Emma Stibbon, presented to a London audience for the very first time, following its initiation at Towner Eastbourne and tour to the Burton Art Gallery, Bideford.

    Monumental watercolours, drawings and a site-specific installation bring us to the frontlines of climate change, connecting vanishing polar ice and surging sea-levels with the alarming rate of erosion taking place on UK coastlines.

    For all artwork enquires please contact sales@cristearoberts.com. 

    Exhibition open until 22 November 2025.

    Click here to download press release
    Witness to a Warming World: A Panel Discussion
    6.30pm, Thursday 13 November

    Join Emma Stibbon, artist; Sara Cooper, Head of Collections and Exhibitions at Towner Eastbourne; and Dr Dylan Rood, Associate Professor in Geohazards at Imperial College London, as they discuss the themes of Stibbon’s new work and the research that informed her solo exhibition, Melting Ice, Rising Tides, currently on show at Cristea Roberts Gallery.

    The exhibition, which has toured to London from Towner Eastbourne and the Burton at Bideford, explores and documents through drawings, prints and an immersive installation, how the warming environment of the polar regions directly causes rising sea levels and coastal erosion on UK coastlines, with a specific focus on Sussex and North Devon. The area of cliffs in Sussex and North Devon explored by Stibbon were also the subject of studies that revealed the alarming rate of erosion our shores are undergoing due to sea level rise.

    The panel will discuss these findings, including Stibbon’s experiences of observing and recording such precarious environments, how she makes her work and the importance of art practice in helping us understand what we stand to lose.

    The exhibition will open from 6pm and the talk will begin at 6.30pm with an opportunity for an audience Q&A at the end. Seating limited. To reserve your space contact events@cristearoberts.com.

    London Art + Climate Week

    12 - 16 November 2025

    This exhibition forms part of London Art + Climate Week, spotlighting exhibitions and activations on the topic of climate action in the arts.

    Presented by Gallery Climate Coalition and gowithYamo, it runs parallel to the UN Climate Change Conference, COP30.

    “I feel working from landscape today has never been more pressing. I can see that many glaciated sites I am revisiting are changing beyond recognition. Often when I am out working in the field I have a sense of witness. I want to get down on the page the particularities of an iceberg or glacier front.”
    “I want to relate the materials I’ve gathered while at a location…to impart something of this physical experience of place to the viewer.”

    Exhibition Book

    Exhibition Book

    Purchase this 72-page hard-back publication, published to coincide with Emma Stibbon: Melting Ice | Rising Tides.
    The book contains a foreword by former Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, as well as an interview with the artist by curator Sara Cooper and an essay on the sublimity of landscape by Richard Fisher. Tucked inside the back cover is a photographic pull-out image of Stibbon's installation Rock Fall, 2024.

    £25

    Buy now

    Top image: Emma Stibbon; Breaker (detail), 2023

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