Extreme South: Antarctica Imagined

Overview

Up until 1675 Antarctica was Terra Incognita ("The Unknown Land"), unseen and, until the early 1800s, untouched. While physically unexplored, artists explored the area with their minds, fitting the continent with unicorns, and other fantastical paraphernalia. The icy continent was (and still is), a blank canvas for the imagination.

Extreme South: Antartica Imagined, an exhibition at Turnbull Gallery showing from July 7 until September 12, explores the ways in which the continent has permeated our art.

Pieces on show include 16th-century maps which depict the continent as a land mass populated with camels, elephants and unicorns, to a copy of Aurora Australis, the first book to be written and printed in 1908 on the Ice itself.

Creating Aurora Australis was a winter pastime for Shackleton and his crew while huddled up inside a hut in Cape Royds in the McMurdo Sound during their 1907-1909 expedition. The book's cover was made from wooden crates used to pack food. All of its illustrations were done by George Marston, the expedition's official artist.  Over a hundred books were published in the hut, but only thirty have survived the century.

Poetry by Bill Manhire and work from contemporary artist Gabby O'Connor will also be on show.