Island Days

Island Days is a postcard journal compromised of 109 separate cards: one card for each day living at Base A, Goudier Island, Port Lockroy in the Antarctic Peninsula, from November 2016 to March 2017.

 

The work pays homage to the heritage of Base A: the postcard form is a reference to the historic and contemporary post office function of the station; whilst the device of a daily entry echoes the tradition of journal and log keeping in Antarctic exploration. The consciously economical use of words on each postcard was inspired by the telegram word count restriction imposed on the teams who ran the base while it was in operation from 1944-1962. Using individual metal typesetting letters and an ink pad, Adele painstakingly constructed and printed each sentence by hand; the act of printing/stamping yet another reference to Goudier Island's post office heritage.

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Adele distills daily observations and experiences into a few words. When read in sequence the work is a poem-like narrative of island life. The white page of the postcard is a metaphor for the dominant cultural imaginary of Antarctica as a pristine, white, wilderness. The ink and the written words are the mark of human presence in the Antarctic landscape.