Antarctica

Antarctica: five responses from the collection, 2020-2021

From childhood Sidney Nolan had been fascinated by the pioneering Antarctic explorers, Robert Scott, Ernest Shackleton and the Adelaide geologist Douglas Mawson. Sir Edmund Hillary’s successful epic overland crossing (1955–58) of Antarctica further ignited Nolan’s ambition to travel to that continent, and in January 1964 an opportunity arose for him to undertake an eight-day visit. Nolan recalled:

I had this cliché idea of Antarctica being flat, an enormous paddock across which dogs would run and explorers would battle … but I found a majestic kind of great continent, very much higher than Switzerland, and glaciers the size of Sydney Harbour coming down at steep angles. One felt this instantaneous fear at the first sight of it, that it would annihilate one; but this was overcome by the sense of wonder in it.

Upon his return to his London studio Nolan completed a sequence of sixty-eight works, which became known as his Antarctica series.

Maria Zagala, Associate Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs