The vast seventh continent to our south is, to this day, the permanent home of 0% of the world’s population. There are research stations with scientists and support staff who rotate in and out. There are tourists, who come in ever-growing numbers but, happily, leave. There is abundant wildlife, increasingly under threat as our climate changes. And there are the stories of exploration that linger in the psyche. Who hasn’t heard of Robert Falcon Scott, who died on Ross Ice Shelf in late March of 1912, having been beaten to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen by just a few weeks? It was one of his fatally beleaguered party, Captain Lawrence Oates, who left their tent on the return journey to camp saying: “I am just going outside and may be some time.”

Antarctica, Carriageworks, Sydney, 2023. Photo © Wendell Teodoro

Ideas of exploration and environmental exploitation lie at the heart of Mary Finsterer’s heart-stoppingly beautiful Antarctica, although the specifics are for each audience member to decide upon. Antarctica exists in a world of allusion, mystery, memory and the numinous. There is something of the religious fervour of a medieval...