Cork Printmakers Studio Gallery, Cork City
3 October – 22 November 2024
Antarctic Archive is a solo exhibition by Elize de Beer that explores her grandfather, Willie de Beer’s, photographic archive of Antarctica. The exhibition features new work in print, sculpture, and ephemera, which reinterpret and reimagine the archival material through a uniquely personal lens. Antarctic Archive examines how these personal records reflect broader global concerns, highlighting the delicate balance between the human and non-human world.
From 1970 to 1980, Willie de Beer documented his daily life and the Antarctic landscape while constructing bases, research stations, and scientific equipment for the South African National Antarctic Programme (SANAP) at the University of KwaZulu-Natal. The studies and data collected at these sites are crucial to our understanding of Earth’s systems and the implications for global climate changes. The imagery within Elize’s series of photopolymer prints were created by manually manipulating and layering photographic slides, overlaying the landscape, wildlife and human influences. These prints will be shown alongside the hexyflex sculpture, Invertible Landscapes, which is a reinterpretation of a reoccurring form within the archive, further emphasising the harsh influence of the built infrastructure on the environment.
The exhibition forms part of Cork Printmakers’ 2024 Climate Action Exhibition Programme, which broadly explores themes of environment, biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability.
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Artworks:
Exhibition View: Images taking by John Beasley
