PhD Architectural Design The Bartlett School of Architecture 2013
Polly Gould No More Elsewhere: Antarctica through the Archive of the Edward Wilson Watercolours Principal Supervisor: Professor Jane Rendell, Subsidiary Supervisor: Dr Victor Buchli
No More Elsewhere is a practical and theoretical project, which takes the encounter through the archive with the extreme environment of Antarctica as a departure point for making art and investigating an eco-ethical aesthetic. I aim to apply feminist theory, anthropology, philosophy, and art practice methods of copying and distortion, to the understanding of contemporary representations of Antarctica. How are techniques of vision and ethics of positionality informed by the multifaceted interpretation of no more elsewhere? ‘No more elsewhere’ is a polysemic phrase. It can refer to the end of the Heroic Era of Antarctic exploration, or to the imminent future disappearance of the melting icecaps and to the time when the evidence of their existence is preserved in climate-controlled air-conditioned archives. As an exercise in art making and in writing, it indicates a poststructuralist approach to criticism in which there is no outside of the text or artwork, while exploring, to the contrary, ways in which writing and art create ‘elsewhere’ as part of their effect.
This research is undertaken in the context of contemporary art practices featuring Polar landscapes that are either predicated on the artist ‘being there’ (Cape Farewell, SPRI Artist Residencies) or, in contrast, are derived from secondary mediated encounters with the landscape (Eliasson, Neudecker). Making watercolours in Antarctica and in the archive are both activities subject to climate; Antarctica’s climate limits due to freezing temperatures, the archive due to institutional restrictions enforced for the sake of conservation. What can my archival encounter with the Antarctic watercolours of Wilson tell us about the contemporary envisioning of extreme environments? My encounter is explored through practical making of artworks, such as the Anamorphic Landscape series of handblown mirrored glass globes on watercolour paintings of anamorphic inverted panoramas, each titled after a Wilson watercolour.
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