- Venue
- British Antarctic Survey
- Location
Landscapes of Exploration is difficult to navigate. Fifteen artists have taken on the unknown; Antarctica. Their experiences, and the artistic expression of these experiences, are bigger than the pages of a book. But in a hundred or so pages, the book does its best to contain and present them, while linking out to the wider stratosphere of their Antarctic voyage.
So much ground is covered, that at once you feel the closeness of the tight-knit community in Anne Brodie’s specimen jars. You imagine the group of artists, travelling beside baffled and elevated scientists, sardined by boat across seas, hibernating against the elements; painfully claustrophobic at times.
Next you see the expanses, in Philip Hughes’ painting and Neville Gable’s photographs. The land which made painter Keith Grant say: “it almost defeats the artist before he has begun”. The sinister wind-whipping and sloshing of Craig Vear’s audio rings in your ear, and while you imagine these people are kept in such close quarters, you also feel how alone they are.
Every element of the project, overseen by the British Antarctic Survey and sponsored by Arts Council England, is alien. What is most interesting about the book is the fusion between art and science. It may have been an attempt to bridge the wide chasm between these spheres – as David Walton suggests in his essay – which set the wheels in motion for the project.
What comes from this unusual experiment is marvellously successful. Jean McNiel’s poem ‘Salinometer’ is a particularly evocative example of this. She tells us of her night with a scientist measuring “from a device that looks like an ice cream machine”, she learns that “the language of ice is one of rent and quiver”, and she shares her own stories of stress and flux.
History also plays a vital role in the book. Individual, quiet human histories temper the characterisations of the grander voyages of history. Jon McGregor tells the story of Duncan Carse, who moved alone to Antarctica to become a stronger character, and was killed off by the elements. Mellanie Challenger strolls through the living history of whaling; buildings which are the carcasses of a lucrative and wearing industry.
It’s impossible to do justice to each of the artists here since their responses to the landscape are so varied, and so totally contradictory. But what’s most striking from reading Landscapes of Exploration is that the artists had encountered the most formidable, and the most fascinating subject matter possible.
Landscapes of Exploration, edited by Liz Wells.
