Western Australian artist Jacobus Capone works across performance, video installation, photography, and painting, documenting pilgrimages and rituals in environments rendered fragile by time and human impact. Through these interactions, he invites us to consider our engagement with the world and the consequences of our existence within it.
End & Being is Capone’s most ambitious undertaking to date. It confronts the accelerating crisis of a warming planet by documenting a gruelling performance above and beneath the Bossons Glacier—Europe’s most prominent icefall, situated on the Mont Blanc massif in France. Over 89 consecutive days, Capone journeyed alone on foot to one of three remote locations, recording one minute of silence each day in the presence of melting ice. This commitment saw him traverse 1,864 kilometres and ascend 151,122 vertical metres across hazardous terrain. His experiences form the basis of an immersive video installation and related works that register glacial transformation and the vulnerability of both landscape and body.
In Capone’s work, we are no longer living in a time of climatic prevention but one of consequence. The effects of rising temperatures are palpable and witnessed in real time. It is projected that by 2100, the Bossons Glacier will cease to exist, and within the same timeframe, Australia’s ecological and climatic baselines will face stark transformations. These shared trajectories imbue End & Being with urgency, making it a powerful statement about our witnessing of permanent loss and a chance to reflect on the psychological impacts of living in a time of environmental collapse.
