This is a small but interesting, free display in The Collection Gallery at the Royal Academy (at the back of the building on the first floor). Its point of departure is an enormous woodcut engraving made by Emma Stibbon of a derelict whaling station in Antarctica. It was Stibbon’s Diploma piece, which she submitted along with related drawings and photos, to gain membership of the Academy.
Collapsed Whaling Station, Deception Island, Antarctica, 2006 by Emma Stibbon
It’s a big work – 1.17 meters tall by 2.38 meters wide. If you’re close up to it, you have to turn your head to take it all in, creating a panoramic effect. Up close you can see how the powerful grain of the woodcarving echoes and amplifies the heavy wooden beams of the structure itself.
Contexts
This mini exhibition also features about twenty other artefacts, which includes prints, drawings and photographs, chosen to expand and contextualise the image:
1. About a third of them deal directly with the whaling station including photos of it during its time as a research base in the 1950s; from just after the volcanic eruption and its abandonment in 1979; through to the photos Stibbon took on her visits to Antarctica, alongside related sketches and charcoal drawings.
2. Another set of images relate to Robert Scott’s ill-fated British Antarctic Expedition (1910 to 1913).
3. But the biggest amount, about half the display, consists of works by other Royal Academicians of either a) ruined buildings or b) extreme landscapes, which provide visual and conceptual accompaniment to the Stibbon piece.
Section 1. Stibbon
Stibbon is drawn to environments that have been shaped by both the elemental forces of nature and the impact of human endeavour, what she describes as ‘landscapes that have a tension between the natural forces and the manmade’. (So, if you go to her website, you’ll see folders of projects with titles like ‘Polar regions’, Wild lands’, ‘Volcanoes’.)
a) Collapsed Whaling Station
The main woodcut depicts Biscoe House, a large building erected in the early 20th century for the purposes of commercial whaling. In the 1930s it fell into disuse, before being taken over and renovated by the British military during the Second World War. In the 1960 it was damaged by a lava flow. Lava in the Antarctic? Yes, Deception Island itself is actually formed by the crater of a submerged volcano.
Nobody lives permanently on Deception Island though scientific stations run by different nations are visited periodically by scientists. Stibbon saw the building when she accompanied one of these scientific trips in 2006 as an artist in residence. The display includes photos of the station in its heyday, alongside photographs and sketches made by Stibbon on that first trip in 2006, and a subsequent one in 2013.
She tells us that she chose to depict the station in a woodcut because of the physicality of the medium, but also because of the size you can achieve. It’s a very big print, which creates a kind of cinematic, immersive experience.
Installation view of ‘Collapsed Whaling Station, Deception Island, Antarctica, 2006’ by Emma Stibbon
b) Lead
Beside the central woodcut are other works by Stibbon, notably a very striking piece titled ‘Lead’. She made this after her second visit to Deception Island, in 2013. Unlike the big wood carving, it’s an intaglio print. (‘Intaglio describes any printmaking technique in which the image is produced by incising into the printing plate – the incised line or area holds the ink and creates the image.’)
Obviously the central crack in the ice is the thing that catches the eye. It was created by the ice-breaking ship Stibbon was travelling on, and is, perhaps, a vivid symbol of the fragility and contingency of this, and indeed all, environments.
Lead by Emma Stibbon (2014)
But what I liked is the rough and ready finish given by the medium, e.g. the flotsam of white froth at the bottom of the jagged channel of open sea, the black dots in the sky, the strange lizard eye in the hill above the dwindling crack, and the vertical lines at the top left.
I doubt if any of these would appear in a photograph. It’s what art does; even at its most apparently naturalistic, art transforms and amplifies reality, feeding the eye and the mind with more meaning and possibility than we actually see.
Section 2. Scott
Stibbon travelled to Antarctica as artist-in-residence to the Friends of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge. This, I presume, is why there’s some photos and information panels about Scott’s ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic. This photo shows five members of the British Antarctic Expedition (1910 to 1913) . After much trial and endurance the group reached the South Pole on 17 January 1912 only to discover that the Norwegian expedition under Roald Amundsen had beaten them by 34 days. All five men in this photo perished on the journey back to their base camp.
British Antarctic Expedition and Herbert Ponting at the South Pole, January 18 1912 © Photo: Royal Academy of Arts
But the display highlights some unexpected connections. First, it turns out that Dr Edward Wilson, seated on the right, was himself an artist. Among his belongings at base camp were discovered works he’d made before the expedition set out on the ill-fate final part of their journey. These included a watercolour of Mount Erebus, a volcano in Antarctica. After the expedition perished, a fundraiser was organised to raise money for the wives and children of the dead men, and the print on display here, based on the original watercolour, was sold for the cause.
Watercolour of Mount Erebus by Edward Wilson (1911)
And second, it turns out that the expedition itself was organised from an office in 6 Burlington Gardens, which is now itself part of the Royal Academy buildings! Huge empire but a small world, official London was.
Extreme weather and ruins
a) Extreme conditions
Extreme weather has fascinated artists for centuries and this little display includes some choice examples from the RA’s collection.
This is a print based on William Daniell’s painting of the Eddystone Lighthouse off Rame Head during the Great Storm that battered the south of England in 1824. Huge waves almost engulf the lighthouse, sea and sky are mingled in the tumult. From a compositional point of view the interest is in the light emanating from the vulnerable lamp room at the top of the building: if it wasn’t there you’d need the moon to achieve the same effect of luminous light shed on the towering waves and highlighting the turbulent clouds. It is also symbolic. Given the date, 1824, viewers would be invited to identify the fragile but persistent light as not only a navigational aid to ships in distress but of the resilience of Christian faith in even the most troubled times.
The Eddystone Lighthouse, during a Storm, 6 July 1825 by William Daniell © Photo: Royal Academy of Arts
Hung next to it is a sort of modern equivalent, not a storm but what looks like a steady downpour onto remote rock stacks near St Kilda in the Outer Hebrides. Norman Ackroyd has been producing prints like this for decades, they’re a familiar sight at the Academy’s summer exhibitions. The wall label tells us these two rock formations, Stac Lee and Stac an Armin, the most remote of the thousands of British Isles, became an obsession of Ackroyd’s after his repeated attempts to visit them were defeated by bad weather.
St Kilda – Stac Lee and Stac an Armin, 1990 by Norman Ackroyd. Etching and aquatint © Royal Academy of Arts
Other extreme conditions images in the show include a study of waves by Anthony Gross, the print of Mount Erebus by Edward Wilson mentioned above, and three photographs of Mount Etna erupting by Ledru Mauro. All the images in this display (and tens of thousands more) can be found via the Royal Academy Search the Collection function.
b) Ruins
But ruins have fascinated artists, too. I remember Tate Britain’s 2014 exhibition devoted to the art of ruins. In that spirit, the most extreme ruin here is a photo of one of the galleries at Burlington House after a direct hit from a bomb during World War One, showing broken glass, plaster and stone scattered everywhere. But that’s, obviously enough, the result of human violence. Other images are more in line with Stibbon’s interest in the powerful forces of the natural world.
This is one of several sketches by George Clausen who did naturalistic and no doubt dated sketches and paintings of English rural life, especially in Essex, from the 1870s right through to the 1930s. This isn’t a ruin caused by enemy action or the violence of nature, but a much quieter image of slow decay and collapse. Natural entropy. It doesn’t reproduce as well as some of the other images, but in the flesh I found it reassuring and homely.
Study of a dilapidated cottage, Finchingfield, Essex, after 1907 by Sir George Clausen
Other ruin images in the exhibition include a ruin in Greece by Hugh Casson, a study of Dolbardern Castle Llanberis by George Clausen, and a collapsed gate by Norman Stevens. All the images in this display (and tens of thousands more) can be found via Royal Academy Search the Collection function.
The video
Thoughts
The whaling station woodcut is obviously a fine work in its own right. But this is a charming display because it is designed to lead the eye and the mind on journeys ravelling outwards from the central image. Its juxtapositions tease and inform and entertain. Some of the ancillary art works are as enchanting as the centrepiece. Sometimes the smallest exhibitions are the most enjoyable.
Related links
- Collapsed Whaling Station Deception Island, Antarctica by Emma Stibbon continues at the Royal Academy until 18 June 2023
- Collapsed Whaling Station Deception Island, Antarctica web page
- Emma Stibbon’s website
- A selection of Stibbon artworks on Artsy
Books & Boots 