Last week I went to Liverpool for the day to see the Picasso exhibition and while there I popped into the Maritime Museum and there was a exhibition of photographs by James Francis Hurley of Shackleton's Endurance expedition. These were amazing and the story was brought to life, here's a quick summary of it: In 1914 Shackleton and his crew set out to be the first to cross the Antarctic continent but their ship got trapped in the ice and was stuck their for ten months, she was slowly crushed and sank, leaving them on the ice. Surviving in thin tents and shooting their dogs and even the ships cat 'Mrs Chippy' for food they had to wait for the ice to melt, and after two failed attempts to march to land, a group finally set off in the lifeboats to Elephant Island. Leaving most of the men here Shackleton and 5 of the best seamen went further on to South Georgia Island and marched over mountains to remote whaling stations where help was finally sought but couldn't reach the island until 4 months later when everyone was rescued! An incredible story of survival and incredibley recorded through beautiful photographs and film. Go see it it's on tilll January 2011.
The Picasso: Peace & Freedom exhibition on the other hand while having some great individual works, still lifes and vaeritas' and my favourite dove line drawings, the whole theme of the exhibition was very forced and not really relevant to a lot of the works.
(image from tate)
this is great, shackleton exhibition really interesting, they were exhibiting clips of film made at Royal Maritime Museum, Greenwich last month, gripping stuff!
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