Critically acclaimed polar ice exhibition closing

The five star Among the Polar Ice exhibition at The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery & Museum, is to close on 8 March.

Featured as one of the Scotsman’s art critics’ favourite shows of the year, Among the Polar Ice will soon end its run at The McManus.

Spanning 200 years, the exhibition brings together paintings, photographs and diaries by artists who have experienced life in the most fragile of landscapes.

Central to the display are a remarkable group of paintings by two of Scotland’s finest contemporary artists, James Morrison and Frances Walker. Morrison’s Arctic paintings capture the glacial landscape of Otto Fiord, Ellesmere Island, which lies within the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

Working in the exposed terrain, he battled the weather, fluctuations in temperature and the danger posed by the occasional polar bear to produce landscapes of extreme beauty.

The Antarctic Suite is the result of Walker’s visit in 2007. Sailing and making shore visits over 18 days, she visited the Antarctic Peninsula, South Shetlands, South Georgia and the Falkland Islands.

On her return to her Aberdeen studio, she painted a series of icescapes which she considers the finest work of her distinguished career. The six paintings of the Antarctic Suite evoke the timeless beauty of the region’s desolate and harsh natural environment.

Alongside are historic sketches and photography from the early days of Polar exploration.

James Morrison painting at his easel in the Arctic

William Burn Murdoch travelled to the depths of the Antarctic on the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892. From his sketches he produced an amazing painting that shows the expedition’s ships dwarfed by towering walls of ice. There are also photographs by Herbert Ponting from Captain Scott’s ill-fated Terra Nova expedition, whose artistic compositions of glacial landscapes have come to symbolise of heroic age of Antarctic Exploration.

As the climate warms to life-threatening levels, this memorable exhibition offers a visual record of the world’s diminishing ice caps and remind us all that we have a role to play in their survival.

Admission is free. Opening times: Monday to Saturday 10am-5pm, Sunday 12.30-4.30pm. For more details visit www.mcmanus.co.uk.

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