Jaki Irvine: Towards A Polar Sea

Towards A Polar Sea is a new video installation by Jaki Irvine inspired by the story of the mid-nineteenth century explorer John Franklin who disappeared, along with the rest of his team, in the arctic whilst trying to discover the Northwest Passage.

Whilst reading Franklin’s exploits, Irvine discovered that he had in fact lived for a time at number 60 Frith Street, the current location of the gallery, while writing his memoirs of his travels.

Towards a Polar Sea takes as its starting point Franklin’s account of his first disastrous expedition in the frozen wastes of the North Pole and combines this with the life of the present day Frith Street Gallery.

This led the artist in turn to wonder about 'how we imagine a future for ourselves and pitch ourselves towards it, based on what we understand/imagine the past to have been.'

This multi – screen work is not exclusively about Franklin, rather it creates a sense of time and place, mixing fact with fiction, moving back and forth through history, in order to allow echoes of the past to surface amidst the contemporary world.