British Antarctic Survey Collaboration

This exhibition brings together artworks by staff and students in the University of Brighton (UoB) Photography and Digital Music and Sound Arts undergraduate degrees, and Arts and Creative Practice PhD. The exhibition comprises of image and sound responses to selected themes inspired from the British Antarctic Survey Archive (BAS), who generously opened their doors to welcome this collaboration.

The British Antarctic Survey provided a range of source material based on selected themes by the artists. The material has been diverse: photographs, maps, written communications and other records, all hosted at the BAS in Cambridge. Artworks in the exhibition are inspired by a range of themes emerging from the glimpses possible of such a large and varied catalogue: for example, depictions of care, love, play and community – juxtaposed with reflections on whaling, power, abstraction and the lack of female presence in the archive.

Photography and sound staff and students have responded to the archive conceptually utilising materiality associated with analogue and digital processes, as a means of subverting, obscuring or developing from the original imagery. Artists have worked in a variety of ways, realising new visual and sonic work, which reappropriates or responds to source material within the archive, using techniques and processes such as digital collage, collaboration with AI platforms, black and white dark room photography, cyanotype, polaroid and multimedia installation. Sound artists have compiled audio works responding to and interpreting BAS’ visual and sound archive as well as specific image examples the photographic artists have chosen as initial inspiration. All the works aim to extend the ways in which an archive can be experienced.