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Antarctica Dispatches
7 January 2005
UCL's Mr Simon Faithfull, a lecturer at the Slade School of Fine Art, has returned from a two-month journey as the artist in residence at the British Antarctic Survey's Halley Research Station.
For the duration of the trip, Mr Faithfull compiled a diary and a made a drawing each day, using his palm top as a sketch pad. The sketches and diary entries were posted daily on Mr Faithfull's website and the sketches were also dispatched to subscribers around the world via email. His entries can still be seen on his website.
Mr Faithfull said: "Drawings include a detail of the ship, an abandoned whaling station, Shackleton's grave, a colony of penguins and a drifting iceberg. The project conveyed the extreme mechanics of the journey, the tedium of isolation and the awful beauty of a journey into the void. Ultimately the work looks at what it is that fascinates us still about this beautiful emptiness."
The journey was an Arts Council England's International Artists Fellowship, which are awarded to high achieving artists across the art forms for performance and practice-based research. The pictorial journal is displayed on the Arts Council's website, and was transmitted to the Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, Southampton City Art Gallery and Artsway in Hampshire.
Image: Antarctica dispatches.
To find out more about the programme use the links below.
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