Scientists have located The Endurance, one of the greatest ever undiscovered shipwrecks, 107 years after it sank.
The lost vessel of Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton, was found at the at the bottom of the Weddell Sea. The ship was crushed by sea-ice and sank in 1915, forcing Shackleton and his men to make an astonishing escape on foot and in small boats.
Despite being submerged in 3km (10,000ft) of water for over a century, videos and photographs show Endurance to be in remarkable condition.
Inspired by first-hand accounts from Shackleton’s expedition to the Antarctic, Dominic Harris’ new artwork Endurance: The Polar Studies transports the viewer to extreme regions of frozen beauty inhabited by wild creatures.
When Shackleton set off aboard Endurance, he began an extraordinary adventure of human survival within a beautiful but also alien and dangerous environment. Reading from the crew’s journals, Harris discovered moments of awe against a backdrop of fear. Above all, what struck him was the sheer vulnerability of humans when faced with the unrelenting power of nature. Endurance now looks to the present day, where human industry remains a constant, destructive force threatening the polar environments. Though, in Harris’ ever-optimistic depiction of the world, nature regenerates itself and the viewer’s human intervention reveals the magical experience of certain remarkable, natural phenomena.
Discover Endurance: The Polar Studies (2022) by Dominic Harris, on view now at 144-146 New Bond Street.
