7 to 28 September 2024
And the Albatross Did Follow oil on linen 420 x 680mm
‘And a good south wind sprung up behind, the Albatross did follow…’
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1884)
In January 2024, painter Peter James Smith travelled to Antarctica on the Heritage Adventurer departing from Bluff via Macquarie Island, crossing the Antarctic Circle on the 18th January, and reaching Cape Adare in clear weather. The expedition proceeded into the Ross Sea via the Victoria Land coast and had memorable landings at Inexpressible Island, the site where Robert Falcon Scott’s Northern Party was stranded in 1912, and visited Scott's Hut itself at Cape Evans. After circling the northern edge of Ross Island the skirts of Erebus, the expedition returned via landings at Franklin Island and Campbell Island in the Southern Ocean.
Peter found that approaching the Antarctic by sea was a wonderful visual complement to his landed view as a NZ Antarctic Fellow at Scott Base in 2009. The intervening years have brought different approaches to painting's visual language, but the overpowering sense of The Sublime remains.
Peter’s expansive interest in science, culture and history, all coalesce in his distinctive paintings – carefully inscribed with relevant and revealing lines from poetry, mathematics and scientific diagrams.
The painting’s subjects include the monument to Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition, Sir Edmund Hilary’s book on his race to the South Pole and the flight path of the ill fated Air New Zealand Erebus flight in 1979. They chronicle the dramatic vistas of McMurdo Sound, Cape Evans, Cape Adare and the Ross Sea, as well as some haunting and beautiful details from the huts that still still in time, preserving these histories.
Monument and Erasure oil on linen 610 x 1210mm
The Northern Party of Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition was stranded at this site in 1912. Monument marker seen here in half-light, with falling snow.
The Crossing oil on linen 610 x 1210mm
A map of McMurdo Sound across the Erebus Ice Tongue from Cape Evans.
Held at the edge of twilight oil on linen 610 x 1210mm
A grounded iceberg.
Detailed works including a still life from Edmund Hilary’s book on his race to the South Pole, a candle in rusty holder at Terra Nova Hut and photographer Herbert Ponting’s darkroom at Cape Evans hut.
For images of the opening visit Artsdiary. For information about these and a complete list of works in this exhibition, please drop us a line at the Gallery.