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Antarctica: Australia’s deep sense of neighbourhood




The Australian National University’s exhibition, Antarctica, at ANU Drill Hall Gallery in Canberra, from 24 May to 1 July 2012, is a contrast of images: from white to dark, ice to snow, pure to contaminated, virgin to discovered, hidden to exposed, inhuman to humane, fear to astonishment, fragile to forceful, humanity’s insignificance to nature’s magnificence, and inhospitable desolation to astounding beauty.

A range of artists including Sidney Nolan, Jan Senbergs, Bea Maddock, Jorj Schmeissser, Anne Noble, Philip Hughes and Chris Drury give the vastness of the landscape amazing life. All seven artists have visited Antarctica, from 1964 to 2006, describing it as a crystal desert, a frozen sea, and a melting landscape.

The Drill Hall Gallery continues to celebrate the centenary of Douglas Mawson’s scientific expedition of 1911-1914 to the Antarctic and the Antarctic Treaty signed by 12 nations, commencing in July 1961, that the Norwegian delegation declared “might be the great stepping stone towards world peace.” Australia’s Prime Minister Robert Menzies opened the 1961 meeting, stating that “Australians have a deep sense of neighbourhood about the Antarctic.” The first expeditions in the 1950s were restricted to scientists and explorers, with programs for artists initiated from 1962.

Of the seven artists presented in the exhibition, Sidney Nolan travelled to Antarctic in 1964 for 8 days with the United States naval and scientific bases. The journey inspired 68 paintings, six of which are included in the exhibition. Jan Senbergs and Bea Maddock, both former Creative Arts Fellows at the ANU, visited under the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship program in 1987. The photographer, Anne Noble, travelled as an Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellow in 2001. Philip Hughes visited under the British Antarctic Survey’s Artists and Writers Program in 2001, and Chris Drury travelled under the same program in 2006.

One of the most striking pieces is Nolan’s “Mount Erebus” for its portrayal of a dark, foreboding force of nature. Jan Senbergs’ works show the high-tech modular structures of the settlements in comparison to earlier huts used as accommodation for scientists – including dumped machinery and discarded items of junk. Bea Maddock presents line drawings in forty units/panels that show the transforming shape of icebergs with poetic phrases embossed underneath each unit. Jorj Schmeisser uses austere but intricate drawings to layer his images until an entire scene emerges in black and white. Anne Noble photographs plumes of floating ice showing motions and movements, as well as moments of contact between humans and their environment. Philip Hughes typically shows the landscape at a distance in painting form, sometimes from above. Often he depicts a horizontal line of tents or a fractured rock ridge. Chris Drury, in his three-month residency in Antarctica, uses a range of media, from photographs to video. In his video, the sounds of water, wind, and ice are eerily present as close-ups of the landscape and glacial flux appear in their starkness.

What is evident in the collection is the continual changing landscape, its expansiveness, its dangers and fascinations, its impact on humans, its discarded and disused debris, and humans’ throwing light on a remote iced land.




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