Travelling with the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), I will journey to the Falklands via Ascension Island, where I will join BAS scientists on board the ice-strengthened ship RSS Ernest Shackleton. On its way South the ship will visit several subantarctic islands, break through expanses of sea-ice and ultimately reach the ice cliffs of Antarctica. More than a month after leaving England, the sketches will record the final journey inland to the strange science-fiction-like Halley Research Station perched on stilts above the empty, white wilderness of Antarctica.

Using the extremely restricted means of the Palm-Pilot, the pixellated drawings might depict any number of things: a detail of the ship, a weather balloon disappearing, an abandoned whaling station, Shackleton’s grave, a colony of penguins, a wandering Albatross or a drifting iceberg. The project will convey the extreme mechanics of the journey, the tedium of isolation and the awful beauty of a journey into the void. Ultimately the work will look at what it is that fascinates us still about this beautiful emptiness.

‘…whiteness is not so much a color as the visible absence of color, and at the same time the concrete of all colors; is it for these reasons that there is such a dumb blankness, full of meaning, in a wide landscape of snows…’ The Whiteness of The Whale. Moby Dick, Herman Melville

‘This is way the world will look to the last man before he dies.’
Admiral Byrd after four months alone at Bolling Advance Weather Base