Oil on Canvas, fixed on structural frame | 77 x 66 (upper panel) & 23 x 66 (lover panel) | 2024
The depiction is an allegory between the story of ‘Jonah and the Wale’ and Sir Ernest Shackleton’s escape from the Ice on his famous ‘Endurance’ Trans-Antarctic-Expedition of 1914-1917. The upper panel depicts the crew standing around the carcass of a whale as they leave the Endurance to try and cross the ice by foot in order to escape from the Weddell Sea ice shelf. The lower panel shows the ‘James Caird‘, the small boat that Shackleton in the company of four of his crewmen then used to reach civilization, as it faces the ‘Furious Fifties‘.
The artwork was visually inspired by the photography of Frank Hurley and Paintings by George Marston, the expedition’s Artist.
The Pannel itself is a sturdy construction made of several layers of oak wood, on the front covered with linen canvas.