Australia culture blog

Painting Antarctica: how to capture the beauty and majesty of ice?

John Kelly, artist-in-residence aboard the Aurora Australis, encounters extreme cold and curious penguins in his latest blogpost for Guardian Australia
John Kelly painting in Antarctica
John Kelly aboard the Aurora Australis: 'I paint what I see tonally, even if it is moving.' Photograph: Patrick Van de Sande/Aurora Australis

The Southern Ocean is one of the primary environmental cogs on Earth, influencing the oceans' currents and the weather. It is the cold store of the Earth. Where phytoplankton lives, those micro-organisms that live off light, starting the food chain under their home, the sea ice.

It is also a place where original form itself has been created, like an architect’s office where polystyrene and white cardboard models are precursors to built structure. Over thousands of miles of flat white seascape – think Monument Valley en blanc – an architectural and sculptural retrospective is taking place.

Is that the London Shard over there? The SCG? Are those the sails of the Opera House on the horizon? There are pyramids, the Colosseum with arches and columns, castles with turrets, and sports stadiums. Each massive iceberg emerges out of the sheet ice as if it was a precursor to the history of building itself; beautiful to the point that no photograph captures their essence.

There are also more expressive, interpretative sculptural forms, like the raised middle finger and a molar that looks like it was extracted from a giant. Others are just pure white abstractions, ephemeral designs that will eventually melt back into the sea. For gallery goers there is also the white cube.

John Kelly painting in Antarctica
John Kelly on the Aurora Australis: 'I can't remember exactly when we became surrounded by ice.' Photograph: Patrick Van de Sande/Aurora Australis

I can’t remember when exactly we became surrounded by ice. Days have now passed, going backwards and forward, east and west, north and south to try to find a way through the white blockade. Channels open but, more often than not, they close and we go around again.

Several hundred metres off to starboard, five Emperor penguins are huddled together, along with a seal who struggles to hold his head above some lumpy ice in a desperate attempt to look at the orange alien spacecraft rumbling through his white home.
The penguins begin to make their way over to the ship. They waddle at first before dropping to their bellies, sliding effortlessly to the edge of the ice to satiate their curiosity. One takes the lead and then is caught by another. The first stops and drops its beak to its chest; as if scolded by the others for being so daring. Have they ever seen a massive orange icebreaker before?

I begin to draw and the ship pulls away. A few minutes later the ship is backing up. The noise and thrust of the reverse makes the ship growl and vibrate as it churns the water, depositing krill up on the broken ice that has been turned over to reveal the brown phytoplankton at work. The penguins retreat to a safe distance, diving off the ice shelf and disappearing only to reappear at their original meeting place in the distance. 

The ship rumbles up to the ice floe with a thud and shudder, and then comes the scraping and scratching of the ice on the steel hull as we make inroads into our frozen barrier. Ice breaking is brutal. The ship pushing its shaped bow up on to the ice shelf, allowing the immense weight to descend, radiating massive cracks forward and sideways. The vibrations spread through the entire ship.

John Kelly painting in Antarctica
'Eventually -15 degrees penetrates my thermal clothing and it is time to retreat.' Photograph: Patrick Van de Sande/Aurora Australis

The process is repeated until we get through to a less inhibiting icy sea and a few minutes of unimpeded movement. Even when you are at rest on your bunk it jerks and shudders you to attention, or gently tilts you up at an odd angle.

The tracker monitor reflects our movement, back and forth, in circles, sideways as we battle to find an open path to Davis Station several hundred kilometers to our south. A Bassler aircraft is sent out from Davis to help locate a clearway. It flies low over the ship, our first connection with the rest of humanity for more than two weeks. We look for the dark grey in the clouds on the horizon that is a sign of open water reflected on the white sky. Fleetingly it appears. 

Where water does break the monotony, ice coalesces into something akin to Monet’s waterlillies drained of colour. How do you paint it? I stand on the Trawl Deck as the ship reverses. The noise is deafening and the wind whistles across the field easel and we sway and judder with the ship. I paint what I see tonally, even if it is moving. The ship comes back to the same spot over and over again as it tries to break the stubbornness of the ice.

Eventually -15 degrees penetrates my thermal clothing and it is time to retreat. However, I have begun to engage that whiteness, that cold store of form, that first link in the food chain heavy with significance.