Martin Walch: Another Time: Temporal Rhythms in the Antarctic Summer

Walch attained a BFA in photography, as MFA in Research on Digital Stereoscopic Photography and Landscape, and a PhD, all from the Tasmanian School of Art at the University of Tasmania in Hobart. He is now head of the art department’s photography studio. He was an artist-in-residence with Cooper Mines of Tasmania at Mount Lyell from 1998-2003. Awards and grants include joint-winner Siglo magazine’s National Collaborations Prize for Writers and Photographers (with writer Lisa Morissett) 1997; New Media Fund Development Grant, Australia Council for the Arts 1999; Arts Tasmania artist grants 1997 and 2000. Martin served a three-year appointment to the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australia Council for the Arts. His group exhibitions include: Photographica Australis Asia Tour, Naarden Photo Festival Nederlands, ARCO Madrid, 2002 Adelaide Biennial of Australian Art; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; SOFA, New York; ARTV, Australian Centre for the Moving Image. Walch is represented in public and private collections including the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery and the Art Gallery of South Australia. His most recent work has been as the co-founder of the Derwent Project, a collaboration with photographer David Stephenson that visualizes in new ways the complex natural and cultural history of Tasmania's Derwent River system.

Walch’s original proposal to the Australian Antarctic Division for an Australian Antarctic Arts Fellowship 2017 read as follows.

“This project seeks to create innovative new representations of Antarctica through a photographic investigation of temporal changes occurring in the Antarctic environment.

It aims to reveal previously hidden aspects of the Antarctic landscape, its weather, and its eco-systems, through the development of artworks that explore the unique time-scapes of the southern polar regions. It will offer new ways of understanding the movements of water, ice, animals, and people, as they go about their “daily” lives under the ever-present summer sun.

Another Time will employ novel systems of photographic capture and display, pioneered by Stephenson and Walch in The Derwent Project ARC. The approach will be based around the capturing of time-lapse sequences that are then computationally processed to spatialize time as compelling animations. This approach will also be extended to incorporate the use of video in order to allow the capture of short and medium term temporal events.

In practical terms the project will consist of the deployment of two fixed cameras that capture still images at regular intervals over the entire period of the Fellowship. It is imagined that these cameras will be fixed to base infrastructure and provide a 24/7 view of the workings of the Australian Antarctic Program. In addition, smaller mobile camera installations will allow short to medium term events to be captured in the field, whilst tripod-based video capture will provide access to short term phenomena.”

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• CAE1218: Jean de Pomereu: Antarctic Photographs
• CAE1219: Stuart Klipper: The Antarctic: From the Circle to the Pole
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• CAE1605: Anna McKee: 68,000 Years of Ice
• CAE1806: Bruce Licher: Stamping Antarctica
• CAE1903: David Arnold: Antarctic Re-Explorations
• CAE1910: Helen Glazer: Walking in Antarctica
• CAE1911: Donald Fortescue: Instrument (90°S)
• CAE2013: Shaun O’Boyle: Polar Environments