Inspired by first-hand accounts from Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition to the Antarctic, Dominic Harris’ Endurance: The Polar Studies transports the viewer to extreme regions of frozen beauty inhabited by wild creatures. Endurance explores humankind’s impact on these polar landscapes through our direct interaction with the artwork via movement and touch. Weaving an interactive narrative across four scenes, each screen of Endurance studies unique features of the Arctic and Antarctic environments. The vantage point of the viewer shifts from a god-like view of Mount Hope to the atmospheric depths below the ice shelf. 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.