‘Ice Limit’ by Royal Academy Artist Emma Stibbon

Interview by Joy Martin

“Night Navigation”

It is always a pleasure to walk through the Polar Museum’s Temporary Gallery on my way into the office each day, and for the past week this space has been in transition: our exhibition of Scott’s photographs has been taken down, and the gallery has been filled with tools, drop cloths, ladders, the busy sound of drilling, and, of course, the beautiful and evocative giant artworks in Emma Stibbon’s new exhibition.

Emma Stibbon is an award-winning artist with an international reputation. She is based in Bristol and is currently the Senior Lecturer in Fine Art at the University of Brighton. Her new exhibition for the Polar Museum follows her recent Artist Placement travelling to the Antarctic Peninsula with the Royal Navy through a programme organised by Friends of Scott Polar Research Institute (FoSPRI). She also joined an expedition to Svalbard in the High Arctic organised by Arcticcircle.org. Drawing on a large scale, Stibbon works in delicate media, including ink, watercolour, graphite and aluminium powder on paper. She often depicts wilderness and the remote and landscapes that are undergoing transformation.

I sat down for a chat with Emma during a break in the work of hanging the exhibition. Here are some excerpts from our conversation.

Q: So, how did the artist residency come about?
ES: I was fortunate to be selected for the FoSPRI Artist in Residency programme back in 2013, which was also funded by Bonhams and supported by the Royal Navy. So I travelled to the Antarctic Peninsula aboard HMS Protector, a Royal Navy icebreaker, reaching as far south as Rothera Station, which is the furthest south I’ve ever been.

Q: What was it like to see Antarctica?
ES: The experience is extraordinary. It’s a very disorientating landscape – you can’t really judge scale or distance. I found it to be otherworldly, like travelling into an internal world.

Q: And what inspired you to go?
ES: It is the most remarkable landscape on the planet, and I knew it would offer a rich visual subject matter. But although there is a seductive beauty there, one cannot ignore the underlying environmental concerns – that ice sheets and glaciers face a precarious future, and their evident retreat on the Peninsula is clear. One of the reasons I applied for the residency was to witness something of this. There is an urgency of change that I feel compelled to explore. In this exhibition I hope to convey something of the awesome beauty of Antarctica. But I would also like to suggest that despite the apparent monumentality of place, we are facing the inevitable frailty of change.

Installing the exhibition in the gallery.
Q: There is an interesting legacy of artists accompanying polar expeditions. Can you say something about this?
ES: Historically, in pre-photography times, an artist would have accompanied an expedition to visually record the topography. Obviously now things are different – onboard HMS Protector I was constantly aware of the sophisticated technologies recording data during the voyage. At times, the act of drawing from observation in my sketchbook felt absurd…I thought, ‘What am I doing, trying to define something in pencil or a bit of ink on paper, alongside the precision of modern data collection?’ However, I do believe the human response to places is still meaningful, and that the tactile quality of drawing connects people on an emotional level. Interestingly, the ship’s Bridge still relies on the human eye to identify types of ice while navigating.

Q: How have you actually done the work?
ES: My work evolves through quite a lengthy production. I usually spend some time gathering information ‘in the field’ through travelling and gathering imagery drawing from direct observation and through the camera. In the studio this evolves into the drawn or printed image. I try to represent and ‘stage’ the subject through the composition and material construction of the pictorial space. The scale of the work is important to me; I want to create immersive drawings that communicate something of the sensory experience of the place – to try to connect the viewer with the Polar environment.

Q: Any final thoughts?
ES: It was so exciting. I still dream about it.
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The exhibition is now open and will be running until 5 September 2015 in the Temporary Gallery of the Polar Museum.

Joy Martin

S. A. Andrée and Knut Frænkel with the crashed balloon on the pack ice. The exposed film for this photograph and others from the failed 1897 expedition was recovered in 1930. Photographed by Nils Strindberg. SPRI  P: 48/28/1

‘Andree and Fraenkel stood looking at it, as if the first to arrive at the scene of a disaster or a remarkable anomaly, while Strindberg walked off on the ice and took photographs of it’.
from The Ice Balloon by Alec Wilkinson

In 1897, the race to reach the Geographic North Pole was still an open contest.  Several explorers before Andrée had tried and failed (including Peary, Franklin and Nansen), but none of them had made an attempt to get there in a hot air balloon.  Salomon August Andrée was inspired to see if he could sail over the top of the world after a conversation with fellow explorer A. E. Nordenskiöd in 1894, who was considering using a balloon to discover more about Antarctica.

Making the balloon

Andrée, already a keen aeronaut, secured funding and commissioned Henri Lachambre’s balloon workshop in Paris to manufacture a balloon strong enough for long flights from 600 pieces of fortified silk.  He recruited two young fellow Swedes to accompany him: photographer Nils Strindberg, to create a photographic aerial record of the arctic, and engineer Knut Fraenkel, to record the scientific observations of the expedition.

Andrée, Strindberg and Fraenkel set off in their balloon from Danes Island on July 11^th 1897, after one failed attempt the previous summer.  Although blustery, the wind was far from favourable.  The balloon struggled from the start, dropping three of its four guide ropes; losing gas from several unvarnished seams and becoming frozen and waterlogged the further north the explorers drifted.  Sixty five hours and 295 miles after departure, the balloon was forced down onto pack ice.  The men had three sledges and a boat along with supplies for several weeks.  They camped on ice floes for over two months, shooting and eating polar bears, seals or ivory gulls when their rations ran out.

Men standing over a polar bear. Knut Frænkel left, Nils Strindberg right

In September, they saw land for the first time since July and decided to move on to White Island to build themselves a sturdier camp for the winter, aiming to continue their journey in the Spring.  No one knows how the men died, but it would appear that they did so within days of reaching the island, as although they had gathered materials with which to build, they were never used and the sledges and boat were never unpacked.  The remains of the explorers were discovered by chance during a thaw in 1930 and from Andrée’s diary found in the camp, it was discerned that the three Swedish explorers never came any closer than 475 miles from the North Pole. Their remains were found by the crew of a whaling ship 33 years later, both the diary and the camera along with five rolls of exposed film, were found near their bodies.

The remains of the three explorers are brought straight from the ship through the center of Stockholm on October 5, 1930, beginning “one of the most solemn and grandiose manifestations of national mourning that has ever occurred in Sweden” (Sverker Sörlin).

The fate of the expedition was shrouded in mystery and its disappearance part of cultural lore in Sweden and to a certain extent elsewhere.  The explorers were actively sought for a couple of years and remained the subject of myth and rumor, with frequent international newspaper reports of possible theories.  An extensive archive of American newspaper reports from the first few years, 1896–99, titled “The Mystery of Andree”, shows a much richer media interest in the expedition after it disappeared than before. A great variety of fates are suggested for it, inspired by finds, or reported finds, of remnants of what might be a balloon basket, or great amounts of balloon silk, or by stories of men falling from the sky, or visions by psychics, all of which would typically locate the stranded balloon far from Danskøya and Svalbard.

The second half of the 19th century and early part of the 20th century has often been called the Heroic Age of polar exploration and this expedition, of manly daring and lands being conquered by technological ingenuity, appealed powerfully to the imagination of the age.

This photograph, taken from the Scott Polar Research Institute’s photographic libraries captures the moment that the balloon falls to earth on the fated expedition. Andrée was fastidious about documenting his attempt to reach the North Pole.  Not only did he keep a diary, but he also invited the talented young photographer, Nils Strindberg, to be the official expedition photographer.  Ninety three of the photographs were saved and are and many are on display at the Gränna museum in Sweden.

This photograph is part of our forthcoming exhibition The Thing Is … which will explore the many ways in which we consider and care for museum objects, how and why objects gain meaning and why we collect them and their accompanying stories. Pairing an object from each of the University of Cambridge Museums and the Botanic Gardens with an object taken from the reserve collections at the Polar Museum, The Thing Is … uses innovative touch screen technology to explore the relationships between each pair and invites the public to contribute to the curatorial process. The dialogue between the objects highlights the often surprising correspondences between things and audiences.

Kaddy Benyon is the The Polar Museum, Scott Polar Research Institute’s invited poet in residence funded by Arts Council England to research and write her second collection, Call Her Alaska, a contemporary re-imagining of The Snow Queen. Kaddy is a Granta New Poet and was highly commended in the Forward Prizes in 2013.

Born in 1973, she worked as a television scriptwriter for a number of years, penning over 70 episodes of Hollyoaks and Grange Hill, as well as three young adult novels.  After completing an MA in Creative Writing, Kaddy won the Crashaw Prize with the manuscript for her first collection of poetry, Milk Fever, (Salt Publishing, 2012).

Kaddy Benyon and Bridget Cusack

Creating exhibitions for The Polar Museum is challenging. It requires intense research and dealing with a wealth of material (much of which is original) but being limited by space – and managing the expertise and enthusiasm of Polar community curators as they endeavour to share their knowledge and experience of the Arctic and Antarctica. It is also deeply rewarding to be at the edge of current research, providing exhibitions that convey the present state of knowledge and also to raise questions about new fields of research. 

Each exhibition is unique; conveying an artist’s response to the Polar Regions; communicating the latest scientific research; or discussing historical themes and characters. Sometimes all three of these aspects can be in one exhibition. One size does not fit all, and creating a narrative structure on which to base an exhibition is a core task.

Our current exhibition, Sea Monsters to Sonar: Mapping the Polar Oceans was the idea of Dr John Ash an associate of the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) and former submariner. To gather ideas and material for the exhibition, he and I travelled to Portsmouth and visited HMS Protector, the Royal Navy's polar patrol vessel and one equipped with excellent facilities for mapping; we also visited the nearby Submarine Museum. We had the privilege of visiting the United Kingdom's Hydrographic Office (UKHO) where we saw original polar maps and charts and the latest developments in mapping the seabed and coastlines of the harsh Polar Regions. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) were also very helpful with information from their Mapping and Geographic Information Centre (MAGIC) and they kindly loaned us a model of the James Clark Ross, a scientific vessel that they operate.

Inspired and informed by our colleagues at the Scott Polar Research Institute, the ideas for the exhibition began to emerge until we were ready to develop themes, design panels and choose the final items for display. Fortunately, our Conservator, Sophie Rowe, is fluent in Danish and assisted in securing replicas of Inuit driftwood maps, the originals of which are in the National Museum of Greenland. Here in Cambridge, the University Library kindly loaned a Mercator Atlas and the Whipple Museum of the History of Science provided an instrument for measuring depth. SPRI's own collections provided a rich source of visual, archival and artistic material. Exhibitions are a team effort and thanks to expert and enthusiastic support from our colleagues John’s vision is now a ‘live’ exhibition.

When a visitor leaves The Polar Museum we hope that they know more than when they entered but we also hope that they're now curious to know even more about the Polar Regions. The current exhibition, Sea Monsters to Sonar: Mapping the Polar Oceans, offers science, art, history and a 'submarine'! Once again we hope to have combined several interesting themes to create another informative and engaging exhibition.

Bryan Lintott, Exhibitions Officer

The brass tag of a dog named Tresor is one of the most recent additions to the Museum’s permanent display. Tresor was one of thirty-three Siberian sledging dogs on Scott’s British Antarctic Terra Nova Expedition (1911-13).

The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who beat Scott to the South Pole and got back alive, was an expert in using dog teams: they were a key factor in his success. By killing a certain number of the dogs at each stage of his journey to create food for the others, Amundsen reduced the weight of supplies needed for the trip. He also ensured that his men would not have to pull the sledges themselves, which was Scott’s exhausting method in his fatal attempt on the Pole.

Unlike Amundsen, Scott didn’t believe that dog teams would be effective as a means of transport in Antartica, but the members of the expedition felt a great deal of affection for their dogs. They must have been a welcome reminder of the normality of home in the strange and lonely Antarctic environment. 

The expedition geologist and founder of SPRI, Frank Debenham, wrote a story about one of them, Stareek. In the Antarctic, a book of light-hearted stories from the expedition published in 1952, gives us a wonderful sense of how the presence of the dogs gave things a domestic feel, writing that “sledging-dogs have just as much individuality as we know exists in our own pets in civilised life.”

He also described the pleasure of working with them, explaining that

“One of the delightful things about dog-driving is their eagerness for work. When you came out of the hut with the dog-harnesses on your arm the loose dogs would rush up to you and try to insert their heads into the loop of the harness, begging to be taken.”

They were a lot more fun than the stubborn and obstinate ponies which were more heavily relied on for transportation by Scott and his men.

Despite his scepticism about the dogs’ usefulness, Scott himself was profoundly compassionate and concerned for the wellbeing of all the animals he took with him to Antarctica. On one occasion, a team pulled by thirteen sledge dogs crossed a concealed crevass. Only the lead dog made it across: the rest were left hanging by their harnesses in the sudden chasm, and two had slipped out and fallen to the bottom completely. It took the men hours to rescue the dogs; Scott himself insisted on being lowered 65 feet into the crevasse in order to rescue the two who had fallen.

When Debenham finally left Antarctica in February 1913, of all the surviving sledging dogs it was Tresor he took with him, whom he described as “a marvel of quietness and amiability.” Looking at the photographic portrait of Tresor, it’s not hard to read those human characteristics in his face – he seems peaceful and benevolent; his gaze passes off into the middle distance as if he’s gently contemplating something. Debenham’s sketch makes his affection for Tresor palpable – he’s given him a friendly smile and that same contemplative expression.

Returning to England via Sydney, Debenham left Tresor with a young man called Archbold. After Tresor’s death, his dog tag was kept in a button box for many years. Luckily, its connection to a well-travelled dog and a historic expedition was identified and we are delighted to see it join The Polar Museum collection.