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| Read Sheila Farr's review in The Seattle Times. |
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| Drawing from John Ruskin’s notions of the "Pathetic Fallacy" in which the outward manifestation of the landscape mirrors inner emotional states, Patte Loper's new body of work employs Antarctica—hostile, empty, beautiful—as a fictional site of historical, scientific and emotional speculation. The images are inspired by accounts of early 20th century explorers and their attempts to map uncharted lands with woefully inadequate knowledge and equipment in order to fulfill a sense of manifest destiny—all the while maintaining impeccable manners and civility in the face of hopeless brutality. Certain works in the show draw upon images of structures built by early Antarctic explorers in dire circumstances and with limited means. For example, Improvised Shelter (Hut 2) is based on the structure that Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton's expedition crew built from a salvaged lifeboat after they were stranded on Elephant Island (1915). Other visual references for works are drawn from 1950’s bomb shelter plans, ships caught and destroyed in the pack ice, as well as viable existing structures currently in use at the South Pole. The exhibition's drawings focus on these structures in their relationship to the geological and atmospheric phenomena found on the Antarctic continent—vast ice fields, bottomless chasms, and Aurora Polaris. While leading an early scientific expedition, explorer Sir Douglas Mawson, was moved to write: “Powerless, one was in the spell of an all-enfolding wonder…we had come to probe its mystery, we had hoped to reduce it in terms of science, but there was always the ‘indefinable’ which held aloof, yet riveted out souls.” The animation, Love Song, is based on a scene from a David Attenborough nature documentary which depicts tiny crustaceans and insect larvae that can live only at the height of the Antarctic summer in rare pools of melt water. The show’s title, A Peculiar Brightness in the Sky is a phrase lifted from Douglas Mawson’s account of his 1912-1913 Antarctic expedition. He uses the phrase to describe what is commonly known in the polar regions as “Ice Blink," the glare of the ice reflected on the undersides of clouds. I Love You to Death, Platform |
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