Chris Drury: Antarctica

Drury was born in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1948. He has been working as an artist for over 30 years, first starting to make work about landscape and nature after a walk in the Canadian Rockies with Hamish Fulton in 1975. His work seeks to make connections between different phenomena in the world, specifically between: Nature and Culture, Inner and Outer, Microcosm and Macrocosm. Drury has work in various museum collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London; British Museum; Leeds City Art Gallery; the British Government Art Collection and the Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester. His site-specific works are in Britain, Japan, Denmark and America. He has exhibited widely in Europe, America and Japan and has had solo shows in Britain, Ireland and America, as well as numerous awards including a Pollack Krasner award in 1995; a University College London 'Art in Health Award' for work on systems in the body and systems on the planet in 2004 and Artists and Writers Antarctic award in 2006. A solo show on work developed from his fellowship in Antarctica was held in April 2008 at Beaux Arts. His work is included in numerous Land Art survey books and he has his own monograph: CHRIS DRURY 'Silent Spaces', published by Thames and Hudson.

From December 1, 2006 to February 5, 2007, Drury was in Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey on the 'Artists and Writers Fellowship'. He sailed South on The James Clark Ross from Stanley in the Falklands to Rothera on the Antarctic peninsula, arriving on 15th December. He "chose to go to Rothera because I knew that from there I would be able to get deep into Antarctica and experience a landscape which is absolute, and which I could use as a kind of benchmark with which to compare and contrast other phenomena, both in the macrocosm and the microcosm." While there Drury made large-scale drawings on the ice
such as spirals
and worked with glaciologists making echo sounding of the ice. Once back in his studio, Drury turned the echo graphics into various artworks.

The archive "Chris Drury: Antarctica" includes the following materials: A handmade model of a Scott Polar Tent for projection installation, an earth-text piece titled Life in the Presence of Death, CD of his scanned Antarctic diary, correspondence, and catalogs.

• CAE1042: Lita Albuquerque: Stellar Axis, Antarctica
• CAE1103: Joan Myers: Wondrous Cold, An Antarctic Journey
• CAE1107: Stephen Eastaugh: Antarctic Work
• CAE1112: Simon Balm: Stellar Axis, Antarctica
• CAE1117: William L. Fox: Terra Antarctica
• CAE1202: David Rosenthal: Paintings of the North and South Polar Regions
• CAE1217: Paul D. Miller, aka DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid: Ice Music
• CAE1218: Jean de Pomereu: Antarctic Work
• CAE1219: Stuart Klipper: The Antarctic, From the Circle to the Pole
• CAE1307: Chris Kannen: An Antarctic Extended Season
• CAE1605: Anna McKee: 68,000 Years of Ice
• CAE1806: Bruce Licher: Stamping Antarctica
• CAE1910: Helen Glazer: Walking in Antarctica