AN AWFULLY BEAUTIFUL PLACE: THE ANTARCTIC ART OF STEPHEN EASTAUGH
Spaces and Places (detail) 2009, acrylic, cotton wool, linen.
Exhibition opens 6.00pm Thursday 7 June 2012
Exhibition continues until Sunday 1 July 2012
Opening speaker: Tony Press - CEO Antarctic Climate + Ecosystems Cooperative Research
Centre and ex-director of the Aust. Antarctic Division.
You are also invited to attend a screening of the artist's documentary Winterover at
1pm Tuesday 12th June in the gallery, followed by Q and A.
This exhibition spans ten years of Stephen Eastaugh's work dealing with Antarctica.
In total the artist has spent eighteen months on the 'Ice', a time span no other
contemporary Australian artist has committed to the white continent. This exhibition
is a survey show that presents massive landscape based wall hangings produced at
Mawson Station during winter, cartographic pattern works from a summer at Davis
Station, and tiny 'Travailogue' works created on numerous journeys across the
Southern Ocean.
"I keep returning to Antarctica to collect sublime views, fecund experiences and to make art.
My work meanders between representational scenes and non-figuration but I regard all as
landscapes synthesized from a long romance with a rather remote part of the planet."
- Stephen Eastaugh
This project was assisted through Arts Tasmania by the Minister for the Arts. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australian Antarctic Division's Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship.