Blue and white painted triangles, abstractly depicting an iceburg.

Extreme South

Antarctica imagined

Runs from 7 July – 12 September | 10am – 5pm, Monday – Saturday | Level one

Antarctica was invented long before it was discovered – and it continues to be re-invented long after it was explored. Since its earliest conception in myth and its first ‘scientific’ postulation in the third century BC, the icy continent has been fertile ground for the imagination.

Part of 'Hoosh' by Bill Manhire. Reads 'into the endless November light/where the mist/touches Discovery. touches/Terror, and the glaciers calve and thunder/melt-water of whatever was freezing here/a million years before Christ'Photo by Jay Buzenberg.

This exhibition features some of the literary and visual responses to Antarctica from the 1500s to the present day. It draws a trajectory from early maps to literary utopias, fantastical theories, gothic horror, adventure stories, and on to the many-faceted approaches of the 20th century.

Fiona Oliver – Curator

Some Time by Gabby O'Connor

Antarctica is reinterpreted again by artist Gabby O'Connor through the iceburgs of her work Some Time. See how she made them: