Endlessness

Endlessness (2020) takes Scott’s expedition to the Antarctic in 1910–13 as its starting point. Through facts, borrowed text, new and archival images, Endlessness retells this journey, while a series of visual and written ‘interludes’ open up a more speculative narrative on solitude, interiority, and vision.

The book is based around a pair of skis used on the expedition, which belonged to one of the younger members of Scott’s Polar Party, Apsley Cherry-Garrard and are carved with his initials, most likely by the man himself. The skis—now at the Royal Geographical Society in London—are reproduced at actual scale, and run across several pages as a visual nod to Cherry-Garrard’s physical ordeals in the Antarctic and a reminder that to live life to the full is to find a balance between the corporeal and the reach of our imagination.

The book also mulls over the uncertainties of vision. Cherry-Garrard was profoundly myopic, photographs showing him habitually wearing metal-rimmed spectacles. These would have frozen to his face if worn outside during the expedition so for much of the time he would have been operating with minimal sight. As a show of distant solidarity, Tim O'Riley uses his own optical prescription for astigmatism to structure ‘graphical fields’ that punctuate the book.

Eindhoven: Peter Foolen Editions
96 pages. 23 x 17 cm
4-colour offset lithography
Edition of 350
ISBN 978-94-90673-28-4

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[Permissions to reproduce images in Endlessness have been kindly given by: Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; Royal Geographical Society (with IBG); Penguin Books; Natural History Museum; The National Gallery; Government of The British Antarctic Territory; Centre Pompidou / MNAM-CCI / Dist. RMN-Grand Palais.]

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