Friday 21st May 2021 to
Saturday 12th June 2021
26 Days on the Southern Ocean is a text work by Simon Faithfull. In 2005, Simon Faithfull made a two-month journey on an icebreaker, travelling from the Falkland Islands across the Southern Ocean, to Halley Research Station on the British Antarctica Territories. During the journey Simon kept a journal of his time onboard the RSS Ernest Shackleton and extracts from this journal have now been made into small panels mounted onto the railings of Margate Harbour Arm. A journey across a wild ocean, tracing the last outposts of empire, has been transcribed onto a tiny section of a walk. A walk at the lip of the mouth of the Thames Estuary - the waterway that writer Joseph Conrad describes as carrying: “The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires”. There is a parallel work, 14 Days on the North Atlantic, installed on Southend Pier.
Simon Faithfull's practice, combines video, digital-drawing, writing and performance and has been described as an attempt to understand, to test and to explore the planet as a sculptural object.
Simon Faithfull shares exerpts of his diary, kept during a 14-day journey across the Atlantic on a container-ship, from the end of Southend Pier.
