Artists in Antarctica look inside

Artists in Antarctica

Artists in Antarctica

Edited by Patrick Shepherd

Contents

Laurence Aberhart

Andris Apse

Raewyn Atkinson

Corey Baker

Nigel Brown

Denise Copland

Chris Cree Brown

Phil Dadson

Tessa Duder

Margaret Elliot

Gareth Farr

Dick Frizzell Sean Garwood Bernadette Hall Kirsten Haydon

Hill &

Jones

Lloyd Jones Bronwyn Judge

King

Jae Hoon Lee

Kathryn Madill

Bill Manhire

Owen Marshall

Fieke Neuman

Anne Noble

Jason O’Hara

Chris Orsman

Stuart Robertson

Joe Sheehan

Patrick Shepherd

Peter James Smith

Grahame Sydney

David Trubridge

Ronnie van Hout

John Walsh

Jonathan White

About

Foreword

SARAH WILLIAMSON CEO ANTARCTICA NEW ZEALAND

Antarctica is the last true wilderness on the planet. Vast, frozen, extreme, hostile and unforgiving, its beauty is unmatched and, while it might not look like it at first glance, it’s teeming with life.

The continent holds centuries of secrets in its depths, hidden under kilometres of ice and ocean, and suspended in its permafrost. It holds the key to unlocking what our future has in store for us as the climate changes — and scientists are urgently working to unravel its mysteries.

There are few places left in the world that people can truly marvel at. Antarctica is one of those. To preserve this continent from the footprints of many, most won’t get the opportunity to marvel at it in person. They can experience it through art. That’s exactly why Antarctica New Zealand’s Community Engagement Programme, formerly the Artists to Antarctica and Invited Artists Programme, exists.

Over 100 artists, writers, dancers, creators, educators and journalists have travelled to Scott Base with the programme since 1957, returning home inspired and empowered to tell Antarctica’s story. They have since become ambassadors for the continent’s environmental protection and preservation.

Their work plays a crucial part in informing and influencing the public’s understanding of Antarctica. I’m always amazed at how they capture Antarctica’s beauty in all its forms and share the challenges the continent faces with New Zealanders and the world.

Antarctica should remain as a place for peace and science as the Antarctic Treaty intended. We want to share the story of what happens on the continent and why it is so important to retain this wilderness and its equilibriums within Earth’s systems. Art resonates with people and tells that story in many ways through different mediums.

Antarctica is not an easy place to live and work in. Capturing the continent’s beauty and hostility has its own challenges, no different to the complex logistics of supporting science.

The cold makes it near impossible to paint, as Grahame Sydney, who travelled there in 2003 and 2006, points out. One of his paintings is proudly displayed in the entrance of the Antarctica New Zealand office, as are many other pieces these artists have produced over the years.

Painted in 2006, Sydney’s piece depicts Hut Point on Ross Island. It’s one of my favourites, capturing Antarctica’s infinite expanse of white. On top of Hut Point, Vince’s Cross, a memorial for George Vince who slipped to his death during Scott’s Discovery expedition, is a reminder of just how dangerous this environment can be, and to the right is Discovery Hut, a vestige of the heroic era and exploration. Hut Point is a cold, bitterly windy place, and you are keen not to linger. This feeling is well captured in Sydney’s portrayal.

The hut is a far cry from the nearby Scott Base and McMurdo Station we see today, but our commitment to Antarctic discovery remains the same. Our scientists still travel to Antarctica to make discoveries, as do our Community Engagement Programme participants. In partnership these teams go on to inspire others.

These days much of the science Antarctica New Zealand supports looks at how the continent’s environment and ecosystems will cope in a warming world. In turn, that will tell us how Aotearoa and the rest of the planet will be impacted so we can all plan, mitigate and adapt.

These artists, writers and creators have built a picture of what a frozen Antarctica has looked like over many decades. But if we don’t act soon their work will also document its melting.

Antarctica is an enigmatic, inaccessible and remote wilderness that has always captured the imagination: people from all walks of life and spheres of interest are drawn to it. For over 200 years this frozen continent has been a focus for scientific discovery, geopolitical aspirations and economic speculation — but that is not the whole story.

Creativity on a frozen continent

PATRICK SHEPHERD

There have been many contributions to the Antarctic legend over the past two centuries — not least by visiting artists and writers from a wide range of disciplines who have visited Antarctica with the support of Antarctica New Zealand.

Artists in Antarctica highlights some of the work created by those who have participated in the artists and writers programmes run by Antarctica New Zealand, including the period from 1997 to 2007, when visits were run in partnership with Creative New Zealand. The stated aim was ‘to increase New Zealanders’ understanding of Antarctica’s value and its international importance through the work of our top artists’.1

Through interviews and artworks, this book showcases the rich, diverse body of work created through arts programmes and gives valuable insights into the creative process and practices of the featured artists. There is no doubt that their work has led to a deeper understanding of life on ‘the Ice’.

The paintings, prints, sculptures, music, writing and dances are important in their own right (ars gratia artis), and a number of the artists featured in this book have pointedly remarked that referencing the science was not part of their role. Others, however, hoped that their creative response may have helped (either deliberately or by chance) to support the scientific work being done in Antarctica by providing a touchpoint in the public awareness. In their reflections, many of the contributors make mention of the role science plays in Antarctica and how that research — especially regarding climate change — has affected them.

Antarctica’s bleak and inhospitable environment provides a one-of-a-kind space in which the creative imagination can range. The social settings are also unique, given that the Antarctic community is predominantly science focused. In that environment, the artist is often regarded as an outsider, searching for inspiration in a place where sensory deprivation is the norm and where

Peter McIntyre, Mt Erebus, Antarctica , 1957, oil on canvas, 705 × 935 mm. Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū, 2009/033

nature is at its most unpredictable and hostile. Antarctica is one of the most forbidding places on Earth and does not give up its secrets easily, to either art or science.

New Zealand artists have been heading south to the frozen continent since 1957, either as part of the Artists to Antarctica programme (also known as the Antarctica New Zealand Invited Artists Programme and the Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship), or under its predecessor, the Antarctic Division of the Department of Science and Industrial Research (DSIR). More recently, the Antarctica New Zealand Community Engagement Programme has sought to attract applicants who understand the importance of the science carried out in Antarctica and who can express and communicate this in new and different ways to reach a wide audience of New Zealanders. The history of these programmes is explained in more detail on pages 23–30.

Since 2007 Antarctica New Zealand has specifically invited artists to participate in the programme. The painters Peter McIntyre (who went to Antarctica in 1957, 1958 and 1959), Maurice Conly (1970 and 1974) and Austen Deans (1981/82 season) were the first artistic pioneers to head south, and in many ways their work paved the way for what was to come. Since then, Antarctica New Zealand has sent artists representing a range of disciplines, including painting, sculpture, musical composition and performance, choreography, playwriting, fiction and poetry, photography, fashion design, ceramics, printmaking, jewellery, multimedia and textile art. These trailblazers made it very clear that Antarctica was no longer purely the domain of science and exploration.

Given the volume and variety of work produced by New Zealand artists over nearly 80 years, now seemed the perfect time to showcase some of this work, especially given the urgency surrounding the climate crisis. Many of the artists made reference to Antarctica as a place where the rapid acceleration of climate change is clearly evident. The critical climate research done there was often reflected in their work, or otherwise influenced their general outlook.

We are now in a strong position to examine the artists’ relationship with Antarctica through their own words and work. It is rare to have the opportunity to examine such a substantial body of work by a group of creative people who over several decades have been exposed to virtually the same narrowly defined experience, and to compare the results. Through their work we begin to see how art relates to the context in which it was conceived. Their work and thoughts allow us into the creative process and give us an experience of Antarctica through the lens of artistry and ingenuity,

adding to our understanding of what it is to exist in such a hostile, desolate and yet utterly absorbing and fascinating place.

*

Antarctica existed first only in the imagination, and like so many other things in the foundation of Western understanding, it began with the Greeks and their inevitable pairing of the Arctic and Antarctic. The Arctic, from the Greek arktos, meaning ‘bear’ — referring to the Great Bear constellation visible in the northern hemisphere — was identified by the Greeks from the discoveries of explorers such as Pytheas of Massalia. Applying the inscrutable logic later echoed in Isaac Newton’s Third Law — that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction —  the Greeks determined that if there was a large expanse of land in the Arctic north, then there had to be an equivalent counterbalance in the south: this became known as Antarktikos or ‘opposite to the bear’.

That referential pairing between the two poles endures, with much of the equipment in Antarctica bearing the name of its Arctic counterpart. For example, the large insulated boots everyone wears are called mukluks and Scott Base’s green prefabricated huts are known as wanigan, both terms from the languages of indigenous Arctic peoples. The supple fur-lined boots some wear are called finnesko, from the Norwegian finnsko (Finnish shoe), and sastrugi, the word used to describe the waves of hard-packed snow created by winds streaming across the plateaux, comes from the Russian word zastruga (ridge or furrow).

Arctic history mirrors its Antarctic counterpart, too. Sir John Franklin’s doomed mission to find the Northwest Passage is one of the most infamous Arctic episodes, containing all the essential ingredients of a good polar yarn that find echoes in the later journeys south — patriotic fervour, the quest for glory, futile heroics and bad decisions (or bad luck) resulting in deprivation, starvation, madness, cannibalism and death.

The mystery of what happened to Franklin’s men persists to this day: several expeditions have turned up precious little apart from gnawed bones and silver cutlery. In the south, a similar story; the bodies of Captain Robert Scott and his companions remain buried under snow and ice, the expedition ending in unimaginable suffering. Douglas Mawson (Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911–14) trudged back to base alone across the ice, malnourished and reattaching the soles of his feet each evening; his two companions, Ninnis and Mertz, both dead. Amundsen’s resounding success in reaching the South Pole first and Ernest Shackleton rescuing his men from Elephant Island stand in stark juxtaposition to these tales, but both suffered in this unforgiving land and faced incalculable odds. The stories of human endurance, the butchering of dogs and ponies, the madness and deprivation, the high ideals of men striving for the ultimate in the worst possible conditions,

and the remarkable characters that emerged have now all become the stuff of Antarctic legend. *

The tales of adventure and polar derring-do filtered back to civilisation, fuelling the imagination of writers looking for inspiration and unusual settings for their stories. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story ‘MS. Found in a Bottle’ (1833, 1845) and The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838), James Fenimore Cooper’s The Sea Lions (1849) and Jules Verne’s An Antarctic Mystery (The Sphinx of the Ice Fields) (1897) all incorporated tales from polar travellers.

Andrew Kippis’ The Life of Captain James Cook (1788) was inspired by the paintings William Hodges made following Cook’s second expedition of 1772–75, which ventured south of the Antarctic Circle. Explorer James Clark Ross’ narrative inspired J. M. W. Turner to paint two whaling scenes; and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) may have been drawn from either Cook’s voyage (Coleridge’s tutor was

William Wales, Cook’s astronomer) or Captain Thomas James’ voyage into the Arctic in search of the Northwest Passage. Coleridge’s poem was, in turn, the inspiration for the evocative images of Gustave Doré.

H. P. Lovecraft’s novella At the Mountains of Madness (1939) and Who Goes There? (1938) by Don A. Stuart (aka John Wood Campbell) both had their origins in the adventures of polar explorer Richard E. Byrd, and John Carpenter later adapted Stuart’s short story in his sci-fi horror classic The Thing (1982). T. S. Eliot incorporated elements of Shackleton’s narrative from The Heart of the Antarctic (1914) in The Waste Land (1922), and critics often see parallels between polar exploration and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899), in its ‘brooding damnation of European imperialism and intellectual self-complacency’.2 Mary Shelley sent Victor Frankenstein and his monster to the Arctic in the Gothic novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), and now Hollywood sends its monsters to Antarctica in movies including Alien vs Predator (2004) and The X-Files: Fight the Future (1998).

Edward Wilson, The Great Ice Barrier, Looking East from Cape Crozier 4 March 1911, lithograph on paper, 270 × 370 mm. Alamy

FOLLOWING: John Wilson Carmichael, Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic , 1847, oil on canvas, 1232 × 1842 mm. Alamy

The precedent for the place of art on the Ice was established early on by photographers such as Herbert Ponting on Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition (1910–13) and Frank Hurley on Mawson’s Australasian Antarctic Expedition and Shackleton’s Imperial TransAntarctic Expedition (1914–16). There were also many amateur artists, such as Dr Edward Wilson, chief scientist with Scott, who sketched, wrote poetry and composed songs, often to entertain their companions rather than to provide a historical record. Their efforts were not designed for the public gaze, but rather to keep up morale or occupy the mind during long periods of inactivity.

Antarctica New Zealand holds a number of artworks, interviews and papers by and relating to New Zealand artists, in part because each artist is expected to donate a work to the collection, that provide a valuable resource for researchers. There have been earlier attempts to collate and publish this material but no collection has ever eventuated — although Antarctica New Zealand’s unpublished book ‘The Ice Pick’ was, in many ways, the starting point for this project. It has largely been left to the artists themselves to promulgate their work via exhibitions, publications, concerts and performances.

The intention of this book has always been to present the work of Antarctic artists to the world, but I was also keen that the artists’ voices be present, so they could share the backstory of their experiences in Antarctica and give the reader further insight into how the works were created. A number of these artists do not work in a visual medium, so we have attempted to include something that relates to the artists’ creativity, for example a score extract for composers, an excerpt of writing, or still images from a live performance.

The artists’ thoughts were captured either when I interviewed them, or in their own written commentary. Either way, we worked to a set of questions that covered their overall experience; the places they visited and activities in which they took part; the work produced as a result of the trip; their reasons for going and what they hoped to get out of it; what was memorable; how it affected them and/or their work; and the challenges they faced. Each interview inevitably deviated from the questions, as they were designed to do.

The rich conversations that ensued went on many tangential journeys, and it was a joy to see the artists animated when talking about their experiences, as they relived their time down on the Ice. Even though for some it was several decades ago, the memories came flooding back, and the passing of time gave them a chance to reflect on their body of work and see how the Antarctic experience had changed their creative practice.

I would like to make special mention of painter Jonathan White — the next to head south after Deans in 1989 — who in 2021 spent what turned out to be some of the last moments of his life recounting his experiences for this book. I managed to get in contact with Jonathan just in time to hear his thoughts before he died, and it is perhaps fitting that his final thoughts may have been of the peace and magic that is Antarctica.

It is testament to the power of the experience of being in Antarctica that there is a compunction to communicate it to the world. Apsley Cherry-Garrard, who was part of Scott’s doomed Terra Nova expedition, wrote in his book The Worst Journey in the World (1922) that ‘everyone who has been through such an extraordinary experience has much to say, and ought to say it if he has any faculty that way’.3 That is certainly the impression I got when talking to the artists, and it is how I have felt ever since my first trip to Antarctica in 2004: it is an overriding imperative, an almost obsessive compulsion, to communicate and continue the story of one of the most fascinating places on our planet.

The theoretical physicist David Bohm reinforces this when he discusses the human need to create, and he makes an important observation about the metacognitive process involved, describing it as a ‘fundamental need’ to assimilate all our experiences, of both the ‘external environment and … internal psychological process’.4 Perhaps the explorer Shackleton got it right when he said that Antarctic exploration was not an outward journey but rather an inward journey of discovery. This formed a critical part of the discussions with the artists about their experience and the subsequent creation of their work, and it is a recurring theme with all of the artists who have been part of Antarctica New Zealand’s programme. There is an overwhelming sense that the experience was so life-changing and the purpose of the programme so significant that they have to share what they learned from their Antarctic experience. This was certainly the case with Jonathan White.

Swiss photographer Emil Schulthess described Antarctica as a ‘symphony of splendour’.5 The American polar explorer Richard Byrd took it one step further when he said: ‘There was great beauty here, in the way that things which are also terrible can be beautiful.’6 The artists often noted the juxtaposition of brutality and beauty; the word ‘beautiful’ cropped up frequently in the conversations.

Laura Taylor’s 2009 postgraduate dissertation on the Antarctic arts programmes examined the relationship between science, the natural landscape and art; as she put it, the arts ‘give texture and substance to the public perception of Antarctica’. She suggests that artists, through their work, are able ‘to communicate ideas and feelings, emotions, quite complex and multifaceted things in often quite different ways than scientists do’. Taylor identifies that the artist is able ‘to reach out to a different audience [and] can increase awareness to a very wide audience, to capture their imaginations, move them emotionally even!’7

Several of the artists talked about the sense of awe and wonder they felt stepping out of the cramped

darkness of their plane’s cargo hold onto the sea-ice runway. The cold hits you, but so does the dazzlingly bright sunshine and the stunning 360-degree whiteand-blue panorama. You can’t help but think, ‘I’m finally here!’ and pinch yourself.

Getting there is the result of lots of preparation, an extremely early start and a five-and-a-half-hour flight (if you’re lucky) from Christchurch. ‘Boomerang flights’, where weather conditions have deteriorated in the time since takeoff and the plane has to turn back to New Zealand, are common. Once there, the 14-metre-long giant passenger transport ‘Ivan the Terra-Bus’ takes you to Scott Base for processing. Clambering about in your extreme cold-weather gear takes a bit of getting used to, but you have to wear it on the plane in case it goes down. You also have to carry everything yourself —  no luggage handlers down there — and there are limits to how much you can take, so extra-bulky equipment has to be cleared before departure.

Everyone who goes to Antarctica is required to undertake Antarctic field training (AFT), which usually consists of a three-day camp somewhere relatively close to Scott Base. Essentially it is a health and safety course where you learn how to survive in Antarctica. Like everything else on the Ice, you are at the mercy of the weather and ever-changing schedules, but typically it would include travelling in — and learning to escape from — a Hägglunds vehicle, building a snow cave or igloo (and possibly sleeping in it), pitching and living in a tent, operating a Primus stove and arresting yourself if you fall into a crevasse. AFT is an adventure in itself, but some of the artists found it a bit frustrating having to go through this compulsory exercise, especially when it cut into their already short stay of 10–14 days. One of the first things you learn about Antarctica is that plans can change in a moment, for any number of reasons.

The next step is to discuss with the base commander the logistics and the practicality of what you are planning to do while there, depending on the schedule, the weather and the demands of the other projects. You are assigned a project number and that is how you’re officially known: all announcements and schedules relate to that. When your number is called over the public address system or posted on the noticeboard, that’s your cue to jump into action.

How the artists’ projects have been handled at Scott Base has differed over the years. When the programme kicked off in 1997 artists were generally stationed at Scott Base and made day trips out to the various sites. By the time I went in 2004 (as project K232) it was more usual to camp out in the field overnight at some point. I’ve never been one for camping — especially in such extreme conditions — but even I was moved by the view of Mount Erebus perfectly framed in the apex of my tent opening.

A trip to the American base, McMurdo Station, is something everyone does, and most of the artists make mention of it at some point. McMurdo (or Mac-Town as it is affectionately known) is a short walk from Scott Base and is on the way to Scott’s Discovery Hut at Hut Point, so even if you’re beset by bad weather, that trip is usually possible without too much prior organisation. However, if you do use a vehicle to make the trip, you are first required to sit a short ‘driving test’ to practise driving on the right (as the Americans do).

At McMurdo the reminders of the world you have left behind — an enormous cafeteria with 24-hour pizza

Patrick Shepherd undertakes Antarctic field training (AFT), January 2004. Courtesy of Patrick Shepherd

and self-serve ice cream, a host of bars and small coffee hangouts — quickly become very attractive. There is also the occasional wild party or full-on rock concert. McMurdo houses other places of interest on artists’ itineraries, including the Crary Science and Engineering Center — 4320 square metres of scientific pods and an aquarium — and the Chapel of the Snows, which has to be one of the most picturesque churches in the world.

In his book The Ice, American environmental historian Stephen J. Pyne describes Antarctica as ‘abstracted, minimalist, conceptual’, and he adds that it is a place where we see ‘nature as modernist’.8 Antarctica can be a coldly aloof and dispassionate environment at the best of times, and for many of the artists their experience there was life-changing — and challenging.

For some the challenge was creating their art in the harsh conditions; for others, it was coming up with a concept for their work back on the mainland. Pyne perhaps explains this when he talks about Antarctica as an ‘aesthetic sink, not an inspiration … its fantastic isolation seemingly defied any but self-referential attempts to assimilate it . 9

Several artists found themselves looking at the small (often tiny) details, something I experienced myself, as I was very conscious that you could go only so far in trying to represent the broad, majestic vistas in music without it sounding derivative or trite; I found the initial answer in the small things rather than the grand. The main attraction of heading to a barren wilderness may lie in its remote inaccessibility, but a consequence is that it doesn’t give you much to work with, and you find yourself digging deeper to get more out of the material you are presented with. Some artists noted the challenge of the lack of perspective, given there are few roads and buildings and no trees. The minimal colour palette and the reduction in ambient sound are other constraints: it may well be that less is more, in this case. Being in a place with no indigenous culture, and minimal plant and wildlife, raises the interesting question of how sensory deprivation can affect creativity.

Of course, some of the challenges had to do with logistical issues around weather, altered flight schedules, delays, other projects taking precedence and so on. Between 1997 and 2007, artists had to apply and indicate what they would produce as a result of their

Discovery Hut at Hut Point, with McMurdo Station in the background, in 2007. Courtesy of Tessa Duder

OPPOSITE: Stuart Robertson, Whispers of Eternal Bonds: Focus on the horizon, not the footsteps behind you (Skidoo trip to Scott Base after a stay at Square Frame Hut), undated. Courtesy of Stuart Robertson

trip; the reality was that often those plans were altered and the artists had to make adaptations and adjustments.

The effects the trip south had on the artists and their work is as varied as the artists themselves. They felt privileged to have been able to go there and see it all first hand. All acknowledged their good fortune to have had the chance to take part in the programme. With that came a strong sense of wanting to do justice to Antarctica and their experience there.

There is only a short window of opportunity when you are a visitor to Antarctica, and always in the background is an awareness of the cost of getting there, and of the need to maximise what time you have. The pressure is on to produce something of substance.

For some, their visit to Antarctica was a project like any other and the way they approached it differed only in the subject matter. For others it became a deeply spiritual experience, connecting — or reconnecting — with their own beliefs and way of working.

The natural landscape is obviously the first thing that one is struck by, but for many the human aspect became increasingly important, whether it be the

1 New Zealand Antarctic Society, ‘Antarctica New Zealand Announces Invited Artists’, Antarctic 26, no. 2 (2008): p. 27.

2 Stephen J. Pyne, The Ice (London: Pheonix, 1986), p. 171.

3 Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World , 2nd edition

discussions with scientists over a coffee at Scott Base or partying over at McMurdo Station. The Scott Base staff and scientists were frequently praised for the help and encouragement they gave the artists.

While not exactly explorers, in many ways each artist was a pioneer, bringing something new to the continent then taking something even more valuable back to the world. Being part of only a minuscule percentage of the world’s population to ever set foot on the continent accentuated the enormous privilege the artists felt in being there.

The final question I asked each artist was what they would do if they had the chance to go again. Many said they would leap at the opportunity and felt that having been once gave them a better idea of what they would want to do next time. Some, however, said that going again would somehow detract from the very special nature of the first trip; they wanted the memory to remain intact and unspoiled by over-familiarity. A number laughed off the suggestion of going again, saying they were too old, but I did mention that Sir Edmund Hillary made his last trip in 2007, aged 87. Incidentally, his age and extensive Antarctic experience made him one of the few people excused from doing AFT.

(New York, NY: Dial Press, 1930), p. viii; p. 577.

4 David Bohm, On Creativity (Oxford: Routledge Classics, 1996), p. 33.

5 Emil Schulthess, Antarctica (New York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 1960).

6 Richard E. Byrd, Little America: Aerial Exploration in the Antarctic (New York,

NY: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1930), p. 354.

7 Laura Taylor, ‘Communicating Gateway Identity’ (postgraduate thesis in Antarctic Studies, Gateway Antarctica, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 2009), pp. 63–65.

8 Pyne, p. 152.

9 Ibid., p. 150.

A connection with Antarctica is deeply embedded in the collective memories and identities of many of the people and places of Aotearoa

New Zealand. The arts — from the visual arts and literature to music and performance — and cultural expression have always been central to our exploration and interpretation of the continent.

Aotearoa New Zealand’s Antarctic arts and cultural heritage

ADELE JACKSON

The Southern Ocean connecting Aotearoa with Antarctica also anchors human relationships with the deep south. Polynesian voyagers were the first to venture south of Aotearoa,1 and although there is scholarly debate about the geographical extent of the earliest voyages, knowledge of the southern oceanic world has been passed from one generation to the next through ancestral stories.2 It would be many centuries later that the search for a fabled southern continent would bring explorers from the northern hemisphere to Aotearoa’s shores.

The Dutch East India Company introduced the name ‘Nieuw Zeeland’ to their world maps a year after Abel Tasman’s 1642 southern voyage. Captain James Cook, who embarked on a series of three southern and Pacific region voyages in the eighteenth century, anglicised the name to ‘New Zealand’ after charting the islands’ coastlines.

Cook made the first documented crossing of the Antarctic Circle during his second voyage, and set a farthest-south record on his third — without sighting the continent on either occasion. The Resolution and Adventure medals that Cook carried south as gifts for any people he might encounter are some of the first relics of Antarctic human history — several are held in Canterbury Museum and the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. Expedition artist William Hodges was the first to paint the icy southern world. In Hodges’ portfolio, images of ‘ice islands’ punctuate the records of places, people, plants and animals encountered in New Zealand and the Pacific region. The skills of the visual artist were essential to the aims of the expedition. Tracing coastal profiles, documenting species and recording people and significant events all served the imperialist motivations of empire expansion at the time.

William

Hodges, Ice Islands [with the  Resolution and Adventure ], 1773. Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, IE9611721

The Resolution and Adventure Medal is one of the first Antarctic cultural artefacts. Produced in 1772 and taken by Cook on the Antarctic Circle crossings, these medals were gifted and exchanged in Aotearoa. The reverse shows the two ships at sea, and the text ‘RESOLUTION. ADVENTURE. SAILED FROM ENGLAND MARCH MDCCLXXII’. This example was found on Arapaoa Island, Queen Charlotte Sound, and was gifted to one of the first whalers, James Hayter Jackson, in 1864. Canterbury Museum, 1914.16.1

Cook’s reports had a major impact on the course of history for Aotearoa and Antarctica. Cook chose Meretoto Ship Cove in Tōtaranui Queen Charlotte Sound as a rendezvous point for the two expedition ships Resolution and Adventure should they become separated in the Southern Ocean. This anchorage and Te Pēwhairangi Bay of Islands became known harbours that were used in subsequent far south expeditions from France, Russia, America and Britain.

Accounts of species abundance attracted sealers and whalers to New Zealand and the subantarctic region in the nineteenth century. Relics of these industries can be found preserved on island and coastal sites. Tuati (also known as Te Atu, Tu Atu and John Sac), the son of a Ngāpuhi woman and the whaler Captain William Stewart, is credited as the first Māori and New Zealander to view the coast of Antarctica, sailing as crew on the Vincennes with Captain Charles Wilkes’s United States Exploring Expedition of 1838–42. The ship resupplied in Tuati’s home region of the Bay of Islands on their return from the far south. Tuati is remembered in the cartography of Antarctica, where a peak in the Royal Society Range bears his name.

With knowledge of Wilkes’s findings, James Clark Ross charted a course south on the ships Erebus and Terror in 1839. Ross visited the Auckland Islands and Campbell Islands on his journey and stayed in the Bay of Islands area for three months on his return. Two of the expedition’s most notable finds were the world’s southernmost active volcano, named Mount Erebus after Ross’s lead vessel, and ‘The Great Ice Barrier’ (later renamed the Ross Ice Shelf), one of Antarctica’s largest ice shelves. Achieving a farthest-south record, Ross sailed and charted an area that would later immortalise his name, acknowledge his discoveries and become the focus of New Zealand’s national Antarctic interests — namely the Ross Sea, Ross Island and the Ross Dependency.

The southerly position of New Zealand, with ports and cities well equipped for the provisioning of expeditions, made the country an attractive departure

point and return destination for Antarctic voyages, as well as a place where crew could be recruited. Norwegian explorer Carsten Borchgrevink was the first to achieve a planned over-wintering on the continent: he sailed first with Norwegian whalers in 1895, along with four New Zealand men recruited from Rakiura Stewart Island; then in 1898 he led his own expedition, sailing south from Hobart and returning to Rakiura in March 1900. The living quarters he established at Cape Adare still stand and are now a protected historic site. The New Zealand-based Antarctic Heritage Trust manages the conservation of the Cape Adare hut and four others on Ross Island, three of which were established by two of the most widely known figures in Antarctic history: Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Henry Shackleton.

Scott chose Ōtautahi Christchurch and Whakaraupō Lyttelton as the gateway south for his British National Antarctic Expedition (Discovery) 1901–4 and the British Antarctic Expedition (Terra Nova) 1910–13. Canterbury Museum hosted Scott’s scientists, who used the museum’s facilities for their preparations. A magnetic observatory that Scott established in 1901 still stands in the Christchurch Botanic Gardens adjacent to the museum, and the strength of the relationship is reflected in the museum’s astonishing collection of material donated by expedition team members and their descendants.

As a member of Scott’s 1901 party, Shackleton benefited from the connections he made in New Zealand to support the success of his own Antarctic ventures.

A crowd of at least 30,0003 — over half of the district’s population at the time — gathered in Lyttelton to cheer the departure of the British Antarctic Expedition (Nimrod) 1907–9. Before he left, the government appointed Shackleton postmaster and issued him with over 20,000 New Zealand ‘Penny Universal’ stamps overprinted with ‘King Edward VII Land’ — an area of Antarctica that Shackleton intended to explore. When he achieved a farthest-south record, 97 geographical miles from the South Pole, Shackleton left a brass cylinder containing some of the stamps and photographed the team flying a British flag to mark the site — a symbolic act that allied New Zealand to British Antarctic claims. The pole remained a tantalising goal, and Scott set out for a second attempt in 1910. Two other contenders had the same prize in mind: Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and Nobu Shirase, leader of the Japanese Antarctic Expedition. All three have connections to New Zealand. As with his earlier expedition, Lyttelton was Scott’s departure point. Amundsen visited New Zealand on the return journey and Shirase stopped for supplies in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington on his way south.

Shirase did not reach the pole. Amundsen arrived there first in December 1911. Scott and his party arrived a month later, in January 1912, but they perished on the return traverse. In April 1912 Amundsen presented a lecture to a sell-out audience at the Theatre Royal, Christchurch. Members of Scott’s relief party were in attendance,4 unaware of the fate of their captain — the news of Scott’s death was first reported in February 1913, when the Terra Nova returned to New Zealand.

A memorial oak tree in memory of Scott and his men still grows in the port town of Ōamaru, the place where two of the Terra Nova party came ashore to send a coded telegram relaying the tragic news. In Christchurch a marble statue of Scott, carved by his widow, the sculptor Kathleen Scott, was unveiled in 1917; it is the focal point for an annual wreath-laying ceremony at the start of each Antarctic summer season.5 A tribute to Amundsen in the form of a sculpture by

Brett Graham’s Erratic (2023) on the bank of the Ōtakaro Avon River, opposite the statue of Captain Robert Falcon Scott. Adele Jackson

Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland-based artist Brett Graham, installed in March 2023, is the most recent addition to the city’s Antarctic cultural landscape. Carved in Norwegian granite, the work makes reference to the indigenous Inuit knowledge and skills that enabled Amundsen’s success in the far south. The sculpture is sited opposite and slightly south of Scott’s statue, emphasising both the rivalry and the entangled histories of the two men.

With the pole already claimed, Shackleton planned the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, which aimed to make the first overland crossing from the Weddell Sea to Ross Island via the South Pole. He chose Akaroa-born Frank Worsley to be the captain of the Endurance. When the ship was overwhelmed by ice in the Weddell Sea an epic story of survival and rescue was set in motion, wholly reliant on Worsley’s skill in navigating across the Southern Ocean for its success. Canterbury Museum holds Worsley’s original logbook from this remarkable journey. A bust of Worsley, who was celebrated as a local hero, looks out to sea from the waterfront promenade in Akaroa.

On the opposite side of the continent, unaware of the fate of the Endurance, Shackleton’s Ross Sea party continued in their mission to lay supply depots to support the overland crossing; however, when their ship Aurora was ripped from its anchorage, blown out to sea and heavy ice blocked the ship’s return, the men were left stranded with limited supplies. They worked tirelessly, surviving on a rationed diet supplemented by penguin and seal meat. Three men were lost through illness and accident.

Financial and practical assistance from New Zealand enabled Shackleton to return in the Aurora to rescue the surviving men in 1917. Ross Sea party survivor Australian Richard Walter Richards later gifted his medals and Antarctic artefacts to Canterbury Museum in memory of the kindness and generosity he was shown when he landed in New Zealand with only the threadbare clothes on his back. An oak tree, known as ‘Shackleton’s Oak’, was planted for Shackleton in 1917 at Christchurch Girls’ Training Hostel.6

Both Scott and Shackleton valued the role of the arts in their expeditions, and employed skilled expedition artists and photographers in their teams. Edward Wilson, Herbert Ponting, George Marston and Frank

Hurley produced work that served documentary, storytelling and scientific purposes and enlivened expedition reports and public lectures, helping to engage supporters and sponsors — public and political endorsement has always been important to the success of an expedition. Members of the expeditions put on plays and concerts that were enjoyed by the whole team —  and helped relieve the boredom and isolation. Scott’s Discovery Hut was transformed into the ‘Terror Theatre’ for an eagerly anticipated performance of Ticket of Leave When the men were selecting items to discard or to retrieve from the wrecked Endurance, Leonard Hussey’s banjo was one of the last items to be saved. Shackleton insisted that it provided vital mental medicine — several of the men mention in their accounts of the expedition the light relief Hussey’s playing brought them.7 Throughout the winter months both Scott and Shackleton engaged their men in writing and publishing projects, and Shackleton himself contributed two poems to Aurora Australis, the first book to be written, printed and published in Antarctica.

Reinforcing the deep cultural connections between New Zealand and these early periods of Antarctic exploration, the nation’s public institutions are well endowed with original manuscripts, publications, objects and images.

The nation’s political involvement in Antarctic affairs was formalised in 1923 when the British government transferred administrative authority over the Ross Dependency to New Zealand. However, New Zealand supported and facilitated expeditions led by other nations for more than 30 years before it established its own Antarctic programme.

Dating back to Wilkes’s 1838 expedition, New Zealand has maintained a long association with American Antarctic expeditions. The relationship was cemented when Commander, later Rear-Admiral, Richard E. Byrd, noted for being the first to fly to the South Pole, chose New Zealand as the preferred gateway for his numerous Antarctic ventures between 1928 and 1956. The cities of Ōtepoti Dunedin, Wellington and Christchurch have each hosted Byrd; he described New Zealand as his second home. There is a memorial to Byrd overlooking Ōtepoti and the Otago Harbour, and another overlooking Wellington Harbour from the top of Tangi-te-Keo Mount Victoria.

Like other Antarctic explorers before him, Byrd quarantined his sled dogs on Ōtamahua Quail Island in Lyttelton Harbour before departure. A replica of the dog kennels built by Scott’s team, and the foundations of the original structures, are preserved as a heritage site and visitor attraction on the island, and a bronze sculpture of a sled dog eagerly looking south is a much-loved landmark on a corner of the port town’s main thoroughfare.

Dunedin was the departure port of choice for American polar aviator Lincoln Ellsworth, who made two attempts to fly across the continent in the 1930s, after he had successfully navigated a flight over the North Pole with Roald Amundsen in 1926. Amundsen gifted to Ellsworth one of the 12 Norwegian flags that he had carried to the South Pole and taken on the North Pole flight; this flag is now preserved in the Canterbury Museum collection.

Relationships between the United States and New Zealand were further strengthened through their participation in the cooperative scientific programme International Geophysical Year (IGY) 1957–58. Foundational work for the project began in 1955, with both nations establishing the infrastructure for the IGY and beyond. Operation Deep Freeze I (1955/56) was Byrd’s last leading role in the far south. Deep Freeze I established the first long-distance flights to Antarctica, departing from Wigram and Harewood airfields in Christchurch. Standish Backus and Robert Charles Haun were the official artists on the expedition. Haun pictured the historic occasion of aircraft being readied on the apron. The works of Haun and Backus, which were exhibited in New Zealand on their return, are a unique portrayal of the expedition that established the

United States Antarctic Program, a research and logistics operation that still operates out of Ōtautahi today.

For almost 20 years the United States and New Zealand ran Hallett Station, a joint research facility established in 1956/57 to gather meteorological data for the IGY. A fire in the 1960s destroyed the main scientific laboratory at the station; it eventually closed down in the 1970s. Parts of the base were later shipped to Christchurch, where they were exhibited at Canterbury Museum and now form part of its collection.

One the greatest achievements of the IGY for New Zealand was Edmund Hillary reaching the South Pole during the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition (TAE). British explorer Vivian Fuchs was the instigator of the project. He set out to complete what had eluded Shackleton 40 years earlier: an overland crossing from the Weddell Sea (Shackleton Base) to the Ross Sea (Scott Base). Hillary’s brief was to lay supply depots south of Scott Base to support the second half of the party’s traverse. His spontaneous decision to exceed this brief and continue all the way to the Pole, arriving before Fuchs, caused some tension between the two nations. Now, however, Hillary’s achievement of reaching the Pole — the first to do so since Scott — is a source of national pride for New Zealanders.

The iconic Tucker Sno-cat and the Massey Ferguson tractor, used by Fuchs and Hillary respectively, became centrepieces of Canterbury Museum’s Antarctic gallery. The original TAE terminal hut, which was the primary field station of New Zealand’s Antarctic research programme after the IGY, is now a designated historic monument, with the Antarctic Heritage Trust responsible for its conservation. The trust’s investment in 360-degree virtual reality video technology enables people to enter and explore the building without ever setting foot in Antarctica.

The IGY and the TAE heralded the beginning of New Zealand’s scientific engagements with the Antarctic continent, and they also paved the way for visits to Antarctica by New Zealand artists. Former war artist Peter McIntyre was the first. He was hosted there on two occasions, in 1957 and in 1958/59: his main subjects were the icescapes of Ross Island and Hallett Bay. Landscape painter Don R. Neilson went to Antarctica in the 1959/60 season as an invited guest of the US military. Howard Mallitte, a navy officer and later a commercial artist, first

Robert Charles Haun, A Grumman Albatross , 1955, pastel on board, 110 × 150 mm. Naval History and Heritage Command, 88-192-Q

travelled south in 1963/64 when he was working in the Tourist & Publicity Department, designing posters promoting New Zealand’s attractions: his work, some of which is held in the Canterbury Museum and National Library collections, is a rare artistic record of the early years of the country’s Antarctic programme and personnel. Maurice Conly visited Antarctica in 1970 and 1974 and, on his return, painted dioramas for the natural history displays in the newly established Antarctic gallery at Canterbury Museum. His book

LEFT: Maurice Conly, nesting Adélie penguin diorama, Cape Royds and Mount Erebus. Canterbury Museum Antarctic Gallery, 1977–2022

BELOW: Howard Mallitte, Antarctic scene, Scott Base , 1964. National Library of New Zealand, on loan to Canterbury Museum, PIC78/16

OPPOSITE: Gabby O’Connor, Data Days  exhibition, Otago Museum, 2017. Courtesy of Gabby O’Connor

Ice on my Palette (1977) was New Zealand’s first coffeetable book of art from Antarctica.

Until the late 1990s invitations for artists to visit Antarctica with the national programme were informal, occasional, and offered only to visual artists. This changed in 1997 when Antarctica New Zealand, the Crown entity that manages New Zealand’s Antarctic activities, established the Artists to Antarctica initiative in partnership with Creative New Zealand. This followed precedents set in the 1980s by the Antarctic

Artists and Writers Program established by the US National Science Foundation and the Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship. Open to writers, musicians, performers, visual artists and humanities scholars, these three initiatives diversified the range of arts-based critical engagement with the continent, and they inspired several other national Antarctic programmes to support the arts.8

In New Zealand’s Antarctic arts programme, between one and three nationally significant artists were selected each year, some of whom worked together to produce collaborative work. Notably, the programme created the opportunity for the first female artists from New Zealand to work on the ice: children’s author Margaret Mahy and visual artist Margaret Elliot were selected for the 1998/99 season.

Antarctica New Zealand’s approach to supporting the arts has since gone through several iterations. The original Artists to Antarctica initiative had an open application process in which artists submitted proposals to a selection panel. This programme ran for 10 years until 2007. In parallel to the arts programme, some artists were approached directly and invited to travel south with no application process involved. This invited-artist approach continued until a review in 2015 when it was replaced with a Community Engagement Programme. An application process was reintroduced, in which artists compete with non-arts professionals for a place. The programme has been on hold since 2020 because of the impacts of Covid-19 and reduced accommodation capacity on base due to the redevelopment of the Scott Base research station; it is unlikely to resume before 2024 at the earliest.

There are, however, other avenues for artists to work in Antarctica. Andris Apse spent time on the Ice with the Department of Conservation, and Jane Ussher was commissioned by Antarctic Heritage Trust to photograph the historic huts. There are occasional examples, too, of New Zealand artists working on projects with support from other nation’s Antarctic programmes. In 2008 Adam Hyde was part of the Interpolar Transnational Art Science Constellation (ITASC), a transdisciplinary international collaboration, with support from the South African National Antarctic programme. The ITASC artists and engineers developed a mobile research unit to accommodate collaborative practice.

Some artists have forged relationships with scientists and found support for art within field research events. Claire Beynon’s art practice was complementary to her primary role collecting data on foraminifera (single-cell marine organisms) within a marine biology field team. Gabby O’Connor’s visual records of supercooled sea ice platelets contributed directly to ocean physics data collection.9 Both Beynon and O’Connor’s work maximised public engagement with Antarctic research through exhibitions after their return.

Artists enrolled in the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha postgraduate Antarctic Studies course have incorporated literary and visual arts into the Antarctic fieldwork component of their studies. Tourism and independent travel have also provided artists with an access route to Antarctica: wildlife artist Hannah Shand travelled to the subantarctic with Christchurchbased tour operator Heritage Expeditions, and David Barker’s voyage south on the SY Pelagic is documented

in Antarctica: An artist’s logbook (1991), with a foreword by Sir Edmund Hillary.

Since its inception, the Antarctica New Zealand programme has hosted a remarkable diversity of artists who have examined Antarctica’s natural and cultural environs from different perspectives. The resulting body of work includes literary pieces that have a worldwide readership; music, dance and theatre performances that have been staged at regional, national and international events; and visual material that has been exhibited and retained in the collections of galleries and museums nationwide.

A visiting artist’s initial engagement with Antarctica is often through historic images and texts. In many cases stories of adventure, hardship, determination, survival and death have fed the imagination long before the artist reaches the Ice. Indelible impressions of past expeditions often re-emerge in artists’ work.

Marine artist Sean Garwood has painted real and imagined Antarctic scenes of historic ships and expedition huts. His reverent portrayals, painted in a photorealist style, have an air of nostalgia and admiration. A similar fascination with the ‘heroic era’ permeates poetry and song. Released in 2022 on the album Bright November Morning, Don McGlashan’s song ‘Shackleton’ pays homage to the explorer using original expedition diaries as the inspiration for his

lyrics. Likewise, Chris Orsman draws on Scott’s published journals and Herbert Ponting’s The Great White South for his retelling of Scott’s last expedition through poetry in South: An Antarctic journey (1996). Bill Manhire’s references to Scott and Shackleton’s expedition huts in his collection of Antarctic poems are unsentimental observations of the domestic space: he lists a surprising volume of food supplies to be found in ‘The Hut’, and in ‘Evans’ he describes the historic site as ‘Another hut filled with food’. The references to remnant boxes of Homelight lamp oil that appear in Manhire’s poems — which is also the title of the collaborative book written, illustrated and published in Antarctica with fellow artists Chris Orsman and Nigel Brown — is the focus of Raewyn Atkinson’s ceramic installation Homelight (2001–7). The words ‘home’ and ‘light’ glow faintly on a stack of illuminated porcelain boxes. The work alludes to a sense of instability and vulnerability. Although porcelain has remarkable strength, the ceramic medium and the transparency of the work are suggestive of fragility. The mass of boxes implies a comforting abundance of stock, but the wall is irregular, with the backlighting emphasising the cracks. While the glow of an oil-lit expedition hut in the frigid landscape embodies the notion of refuge, warmth and safety, Atkinson’s Homelight feels insecure and unsafe. Considering Scott’s polar party did not make it back to the expedition hut, the redundant boxes of lamp oil take on a new significance and poignancy.

Bernadette Hall embodies the sufferings endured by explorers in her poem ‘The Ponies’ when, after joyfully building and squeezing into a snow cave, she is transported back in time: ‘Our faces grow black from burning blubber, our eyes weep, our lips split … Our rations run low /  Outside, the ponies lying dead in the snow.’10

New Zealand’s only permanent Antarctic research facility is Scott Base on Ross Island. All artists who travel with Antarctica New Zealand arrive here, and are exposed to the natural and cultural landscapes of the island and its surrounds. Mount Erebus dominates the skyline as soon as the visitor disembarks the aircraft on the sea-ice or ice-shelf landing strip. The volcano is a recognisable landmark with historic, metaphoric and mythical associations — the mere mention of its name can trigger deep emotions, especially among New Zealanders who recall the 1979 aircraft accident, the worst in the country’s history. Small wonder, then, that Erebus looms large in New Zealand’s Antarctic visual, literary and performing arts.11

Apart from those working ‘deep field’, Scott Base is where everyone lives. While the base and its icy surroundings have been the focal point of many landscape paintings and a vast catalogue of photographs, the work of contemporary artists offers some alternative perspectives. Sculptor Ronnie van Hout documented his observations of social events and peculiarities of life on base in his film-based triptych Landscape, People and Parties. Spliced into the film are excerpts from The Thing, a 1980s horror movie based on the Don A. Stuart novella Who Goes There? This playful and paranoiainducing juxtaposition suggests all is not what it seems; a disturbing reality lurks beneath the surface. Complementing the triptych is van Hout’s unsettling sculptural installation The Thing (2009): a life-sized effigy of the sculptor sits quarantined in a claustrophobic chamber, staring blindly, with a trickle of blood running from his nose. The lone figure is a manifestation of a body possessed — perhaps by the psychological challenges of isolation and extremity, or perhaps by something more sinister.

Some of the most striking artworks are those that critically examine Antarctica’s cultural landscape. Anne Noble’s 2008 Piss Poles photographic series, documenting authorised outdoor urination sites, is a confronting

collection. The images of urine-soaked snow marked with a yellow flag contradict the idea of Antarctica as a pristine, untouched wilderness. Noble offers a glimpse into some of the rarely seen dimensions of human presence despoiling the Antarctic environment.

The Antarctic Inventory series, another of Noble’s collections, is a record of vehicles in the fleet at McMurdo Station, each personalised with a name — predominantly women’s names — with the addition of ‘Bitch in Slippers’, ‘Hot Lips’ and ‘Shagnasty’s Nightmare’. Noble’s incisive observations reveal a misogyny that has travelled south and thrived in a historically male-dominated environment. The work is a reminder that all ideas, beliefs and values found in Antarctica have been cultivated and transported there from elsewhere.

The thoughts and feelings of the Scott Base community were the focus of Guy Frederick’s project. Describing his works as ‘giving people and place a voice through stories that speak’,12 Frederick took a participatory approach in representing the station residents: he invited them to write a heartfelt postcard to the continent and to film themselves reading their words. Presented in the exhibition Postcards to Antarctica (2017), the written and spoken words reflected a deep sense of environmental appreciation but also anxiety about the future of Antarctic ice and ecologies.

Antarctica is the only continent without an indigenous population, but indigenous knowledge and technologies are deeply embedded within Antarctic exploration — Amundsen, Shirase, Scott and Shackleton each utilised skills, materials and practices learned from indigenous Arctic communities. In recent years Aotearoa has sought to reflect and honour its indigenous heritage, values and knowledge within the Antarctic living space. Mātauranga Māori is carved and woven into the materiality of Scott Base: a 2-metre pouwhenua, Te Kaiwhakatere o te Raki (the navigator of the heavens), greets visitors outside the base; and two tukutuku panels, He Maumahara and He Manukura, are mounted on the

OPPOSITE: Raewyn Atkinson, Homelight (the remix) (detail), 2001–7, porcelain, glaze, perspex, fluorescent tube. Courtesy of Raewyn Atkinson; photograph by Anne Noble

Leaders Wall and the Memorial Wall.13 The latest addition is the installation of whakairo — a ‘repository of knowledge’ carved into a doorway threshold through which all visitors pass.14

*

Concern for the environment is an increasingly common theme across art inspired by Antarctica. There is a palpable anxiety in Victor Billot’s ‘Nix Terra’, a verse that was included in the first poetry exhibition in Antarctica in 2019: Billot describes an apocalyptic aftermath of unrestrained anthropogenic climate change where ‘Coastal plains are denuded of ice / … /  Glacial tongues slaver’ and the oceans that have ‘forgotten the dialects of life’ carry a ‘stillborn silence’.15

Christchurch-born choreographer, director and filmmaker Corey Baker shares similar concerns. With Antarctica New Zealand’s support, Baker worked with Royal New Zealand Ballet performer Madeleine Graham in 2018 to create Antarctica: The first dance. Although Baker is not the first New Zealand dancer or choreographer to work in Antarctica — that accolade goes to Bronwyn Judge — his was the first dance to be performed and recorded on Ross Island. Graham leaps, spins, slides and stretches, occupying and animating space across the ice, on top of rocky outcrops and inside ice caverns. The energy and grace of the lone dancer and the magnificence of the scenery, combined with creative

camera work and the deeply affecting soundtrack, ‘Wild Eyed’ by London Grammar, is captivating. In what is perhaps the most telling scene, Graham kicks a ‘Caution wet floor’ sign to the ground, using it to slide down the ice under a blazing sun. Baker’s anxieties are made explicit at the end of the five-minute film. Before the final credits roll, the film closes with a plea: ‘While you have been watching, 860,000 tonnes of Antarctic ice have melted … Let’s not ignore the signs any longer.’16

More subtle in its messaging is Where Memories Sleep, an immersive installation fusing dance, theatre, film and music. The collaboration between artist Jason O’Hara and composer Warren Maxwell is described by O’Hara as a contemporary legend.17 The story traces the adventures and encounters of a young explorer who journeys to Antarctica and is gifted the memories of the world by a powerful kaitiaki — a metaphor for the paleoclimate records of the planet’s history contained within the ice. Equipped with this knowledge it is incumbent on the explorer to return and share their findings with the world. O’Hara and Maxwell travelled south with Antarctica New Zealand in 2016. Their intention was to use the arts to engage audiences with Antarctic science, showing its centrality to human understanding of the changing climate.

Ice defines the continent as we know it. The score of Patrick Shepherd’s Cryosphere (2005) alludes to the annual accumulation of snow and ice; the work

is structurally reminiscent of a section of an extruded ice core. The layered composition is Shepherd’s representation of ancient ice. In contrast, Gabby O’Connor created portraits of newly formed sea ice crystals. O’Connor travelled south twice as a member of a transdisciplinary research team exploring ice and ocean interfaces.

Misleadingly, the Antarctic environment is often portrayed as an empty, white and silent space. The arts have been instrumental in debunking these myths, showing Antarctica to be alive, vibrant and complex. Virginia King’s glowing oversized sculptures of diatoms transport audiences into the microscopic and kaleidoscopic world of phytoplankton. Fieke Neuman’s interpretations of Antarctic animal life through textile and costume design are an embodiment of bio-rich and biodiverse Antarctic ecologies.

Musicians Chris Cree Brown and Phil Dadson have articulated Antarctic places and spaces through environmental recordings. Their work invites audiences to tune in to Antarctic vibrations. Dadson’s hyper attention to the aural qualities, rhythms and pitch of Antarctic winds enables listeners to hear and appreciate nuances in the Antarctic soundscape.

New Zealand is one of three nations with the longestrunning programmes supporting artists’ access to Antarctica — a track record to be proud of. As a government agency enabling cultural engagement with the continent, Antarctica New Zealand has shown commitment to the arts, despite the broadening of their remit to include non-arts professionals. The engagement emphasis of the current programme is designed to reach new and wider audiences; proposals are welcome from those who ‘understand the importance of the science New Zealand supports in Antarctica and are passionate about communicating this message’.18 The science-focused application criteria are understandable considering Antarctica New Zealand is a Crown agency with a mandate to support world-leading science.

Science is the default setting for most Antarctic research, and as such this is the realm of enquiry to which artists are encouraged to align. Two Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meeting (ATCM) resolutions, passed in 1996 and 2013, that advocate support for the arts, reinforce an alignment of the arts with science. The 1996 resolution formally recognises that Antarctica has been ‘the subject of significant works of art’, and recommends ‘the

promotion of understanding and appreciation of Antarctica’s scientific, aesthetic and wilderness values through the contribution of writers, artists and musicians’.19 The 2013 resolution encourages international cooperation in support of the arts, especially those that promote ‘scientific activity and the importance of the preservation of the Antarctic environment’.20 An emphasis on science is a striking feature of both resolutions, which reinforces the idea that science is a legitimising context for the arts in Antarctica.

Relationships between art and science in Antarctica manifest in a range of configurations. Artists have drawn inspiration from scientific ideas and data, with many visiting scientists in the field. Other artists have worked as field and research assistants in order to gain access to the continent and to develop ideas for artwork when they return home. On rare occasions artists have been embedded within transdisciplinary research teams where the knowledge, skills and expertise of artists and scientists are brought to bear on a research problem.

A senior Antarctic scientist whom I interviewed for a study examining the value of contemporary visual artists working in Antarctica21 stated that every time scientists go out into the field, artists should automatically be part of the team. Another scientist in the same study observed that art needs a designated place within a research team and should not be viewed as taking up a science place. A New Zealand-based artist who had worked in Antarctica on multiple research projects argued, ‘We absolutely have to provide a means whereby artists can communicate powerfully, with and alongside scientists … both undertaking important investigations and the work of each informing each other.’

Guy Guthridge, former manager of the NSF Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, suggests that science has tended to ‘crowd out other intellectual disciplines’.22 Guthridge supports the view of the US National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities that ‘an advanced civilisation must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone, but must give full value and support to the other great branches of scholarly and cultural activity.’23 As another former Antarctic programme manager put it, ‘Antarctica offers us a lot more than just the science … [It is] troubling to

OPPOSITE: Jason O’Hara and Warren Maxwell, Where Memories Sleep 2019. Courtesy of Jason O’Hara

think about the scientists having the upper hand and being the superior group and artists coming along as sort of tag-alongs, whereas throughout history and throughout the world the integrity of the visual arts and other arts and letters stands on its own.’24

It was clear from the interviews I conducted with artists and scientists that the overwhelming majority believe that art contributes to our knowledge of Antarctica in ways that science alone cannot achieve. Several interviewees were critical of programmes that required artists to demonstrate a connection with science in their project proposal, as this can ‘twist [artists] into doing something they might not have been motivated to do’ simply to gain access.

Elizabeth Leane, a world-leading scholar in Antarctic literature, points out that using art in the service of science ‘allows little room for those who may want to interrogate, criticize or challenge existing Antarctic — or indeed aesthetic — values’.25 She notes that ‘it is becoming increasingly important to understand the specific meanings that humans attach to [Antarctica] — not only as a cold, icy, far-flung land, but as a place where important political, legal and environmental — as well as scientific — experiments are being performed’.26 The ‘cultural turn’27 in Antarctic research is seeing more scholars critically engaging in the analysis of historic and contemporary Antarctic cultural material. *

An artist’s ability to ask penetrating questions is fundamental to their role. Artists can investigate, challenge and disrupt. They can also delight, inspire and influence. The arts are engaging. Their diverse forms of imagery, sound, movement and words connect with our various modes of intelligence and communicate with us on multiple cognitive and emotional levels. Actively engaging in the arts as a maker, writer, performer

or as an audience member excites the mind, triggers emotions and ideas and cultivates meaning. Artists work in analytic, aesthetic, metaphoric and transformative realms. The power of their craft lies with their ability to critically engage both with the world and with audiences.

In the Antarctic research community, it is vital that artists are recognised as researchers and that arts-based enquiry is valued for its contribution to knowledge of Antarctica’s natural and cultural realms. There is a need for creative and critical engagement with Antarctica to interpret both the past and the present, and to imagine and influence futures.

New Zealand is strongly positioned to develop the arts component of their Antarctic research programmes. The country is one of only five in the world with a city that has international Antarctic gateway status. 28 This status is a significant cultural asset nationally, internationally and locally, in Ōtautahi. The arts are part of the city’s and the nation’s Antarctic history, heritage and identity.

The publication of this book and the 2022/23 Antarctic season mark the achievement of two significant milestones in New Zealand’s Antarctic cultural history: it is 65 years since the first New Zealand artist worked in Antarctica, and 25 years since the Artists to Antarctica programme began. Artists’ access to Antarctica is more important than ever. In an era of accelerating environmental change, critical and creative engagements with Antarctica are needed to help to shape and deepen our understandings of, and our relationships with, the continent and the wider world. The stories we tell and the ideas we communicate through music, words, movement and images not only reflect who we are and what we believe, they also help form the values that we hold and by which we live our lives. Cultural expression is the keystone of all human communication.

Dr Adele Jackson is an artist, a curator and a researcher interested in the interrelationships between culture and nature. She is a curator specialising in Antarctic human history at the Canterbury Museum and an adjunct researcher with the School of Humanities at the University of Tasmania, hosted by the University of Canterbury Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha. Her research focuses on Antarctic visual culture, specifically the role of art and material culture in developing human understandings of, and engagements with, the far south.