Sarabeth Domal

A storm with a name. On this island, all winter storms are personified, for no other reason than to have someone to blame when the roads go slick, when the trees stretch the power cables and when the trains lose their grip. We curse Aiden or Eunice with a shake of the head and a full-body shiver at the bus stop. I’ve always wondered about the people who are unlucky enough to share their forename with a fleeting weather system. Do they get sidestepped at the pub, are they met with wide eyes at work, do they briefly feel formidable?

Many of the cyclonic systems which bring forceful winds to the British Isles have a not so distant past on the eastern coast of the Americas. The United States National Weather Service refuses to name chronic winter storms, they suspect that a familiar nomenclature leads the public to overestimate their own strength, to underestimate the threat. One such storm woke me up a few hours past midnight, in April this year. My bedroom window faces the garden of our neighbour, Donna, who has a pair of windchimes hung from the gutter above her side door. On a squinty summer day, they sound almost iridescent, but when met with eighty miles per hour winds, they edge towards frantic panic, beautifully menacing. I asked her how they survived the hurricanes. She shrugged. 

These storms, as they often blow through my hometown on the coast of New Jersey, are officially considered to be extratropical cyclonic storms born from low-pressure systems. We call them nor’easters. On the coast, they bring ocean surges, dangerous winds, and varied precipitation. A few miles inland, you’ll be covered in snow. As the global climate continues to destabilise, the warming temperatures over the Gulf of Mexico increase the intensity and danger of these nor’easters. Communities along the immediate coastline bear the brunt of the destruction, often helplessly watching the storm surge creep over the seawall.

Landfall is an observation of one anonymous nor’easter. Filmed in the three days before, during, and after the storm’s impact, this video is a reflection of the community that the storm interrupted.

The works presented in person at RCA 2022 are large-scale photographic compilations which represent two landscapes recorded continuously over the course of a month. The six photographs above are individual layers within these compilations, represented here as single images, an ongoing series which the artist calls “Stills”.