Episode Transcript
Transcripts are displayed as originally observed. Some content, including advertisements may have changed.
Use Ctrl + F to search
0:00
From the vastness of ice to
0:02
the raw power of swells than buildings,
0:04
Antartica is a a landscape that
0:06
is deadly as it is beautiful.
0:09
In recognition of
0:11
the centenary of
0:14
Sir Ernest Shackleton's first exhibition,
0:16
expedition sorry year, young
0:18
young people travelled
0:20
to British territory in the
0:22
Antarctic region as
0:25
part of Antarctica heritage trusts
0:27
inspiring expeditions artists Charlie Thomas and
0:29
Rose Lashham are both part of a group both
0:31
part of a group and by
0:33
work inspired by the trip on
0:35
currently is their work is currently
0:37
on display at maritime Museum and the both
0:39
of them are here with
0:41
me in the Auckland studio. Good
0:44
morning. Morey, no. Was this on this on
0:46
your bucket list to go
0:48
to the Antarctic? Oh yeah, I mean mean South Georgia Island
0:50
been a dream as a massive bird nerd and
0:52
yeah love of all of all things, outdoors, remote
0:54
and wildlife. The the opportunity to go to South
0:56
Georgia has been the top of the
0:58
list for a very, very long time. for
1:01
a very very long time. I love that bird nude.
1:03
I had always wanted to go
1:05
to Antarctica but I actually
1:07
did not know that South
1:09
Georgia existed before I applied. before
1:11
I applied. But then I got in,
1:13
in I watched so many
1:15
documentaries, I I basically knew everything
1:17
I could about South Georgia.
1:19
when people when we were finally allowed
1:21
to tell people that we were going, we
1:23
said, to going to South Georgia they'd say, say,
1:25
up oh, the up in the States last
1:27
year, I visited there on and we'd have to
1:29
go, we'd have to go, oh it's a bit further
1:31
that. that. I've to admit that I was I
1:33
bit bit the same as the same. I was thinking Georgia,
1:36
so I had to Google it had to
1:38
I saw it. then I was it like when
1:40
you first when it? saw it? Yeah, our
1:42
our first actual sighting of the
1:44
island itself yeah, etched into our memory into
1:46
our memory actually It actually started
1:48
with the of the the ship on
1:50
the ship, was giving a a
1:52
presentation about some of the early explorers
1:54
and he turns and he looks out
1:56
the he he goes, the windows and he goes, oh
1:59
there's an iceberg. an iceberg. we're all thinking,
2:01
oh no, he's pulling our leg because
2:03
this is after three days of traveling
2:05
through, of you know, through, you know, the South Scotia Sea and
2:07
sea level fog, and then fog. And then there's of
2:09
the blue, there's this iceberg, a size
2:11
of a house alongside the ship. And
2:13
then bow the see we could see through through
2:16
the sea fog the the little tops
2:18
of the peaks of South Georgia. And
2:20
we were we all like, we were our we were
2:22
in our shorts, we shorts, we all ran
2:24
outside to take pictures and it was
2:26
so exciting. Charlie, you artist, what a beautiful
2:28
description of arriving on arriving that part of
2:31
the world. world. What about you, you, What
2:33
did it feel like feel like like like and...
2:35
I think me, it really hit me when
2:37
we were on the were on the to
2:39
to our first destination. We
2:43
got got on all all
2:45
these emotions just overcame
2:47
me. me. We saw
2:49
content elephant along the shore
2:52
and we went to
2:54
went to a king penguin That was
2:56
just was just all inspiring,
2:58
think. And you got a a friend?
3:00
Yeah, I I got a friend
3:02
that same day. tiny king penguin
3:04
tiny he thought I was a think he
3:06
was a penguin as well
3:08
because I had a white
3:11
suit. So he was
3:13
following me around everywhere. had We
3:15
actually had to stay five meters
3:17
away from the wildlife at
3:19
all times. So it was a
3:21
bit hard having this king
3:23
penguin chasing me. He was the
3:25
boundary. boundary. Oh, he or she? He or she?
3:27
or she? penguins both? We don't know. You
3:29
really tell unless tell unless you've and
3:31
personal so it was just up close
3:34
and personal, the was just... They, going
3:36
to get me in trouble,
3:38
how cute. the boundary and pretty special.
3:40
you're going to get me a graduate
3:42
of was pretty special. So you are a Arts,
3:45
of taught Charlie? Yeah. What's the, What
3:47
was the you go you go
3:49
there, up you soak up
3:51
the environment and you paint or
3:53
you create? Yeah, when we when we first
3:56
met each other for the first time at
3:58
a training weekend back in June back in June, 2023.
4:00
were put together as a visual
4:02
arts group, arts Rose, myself, Tegan,
4:04
as well as Gemma, I'm doing
4:06
another who project with, which is
4:08
very exciting. project with, which is very were
4:10
presented with were outreach task our outreach
4:12
task of... Putting together either one or a one
4:15
or a couple of exhibitions about our our
4:17
about our time in South Georgia, and all
4:19
of us have very different types of
4:21
photography art styles that styles that we're interested in. we
4:23
went went away from that and sat down
4:25
and thought, thought how on earth are we are we
4:27
gonna begin to put all of our thoughts
4:29
and feelings and experiences on paper,
4:31
on whatever it was that our
4:33
medium was gonna be? How could we
4:35
figure this out? out we hadn't even
4:37
even been to the island yet and
4:39
we're already overcome with emotion, but but Yeah,
4:41
our goal our try was to try what what
4:44
we'd on the, or what we were
4:46
what we were going to experience on
4:48
the on the something that we could
4:50
share with people and that people could
4:52
experience too. And then upon returning
4:54
from South Georgia, all of us sat
4:56
down and went, upon returning from South Georgia, is
4:58
going to be a big job. and
5:00
went, oh did you decide going
5:02
to be a big job. me you
5:04
found For me, I found, I had a hard
5:06
a hard time planning it, just... like
5:09
Charlie saying just because we
5:11
wanted to immerse ourselves ourselves
5:13
and then when we were
5:15
on on the what we found was
5:17
striking. I personally found
5:19
that I the icebergs we
5:21
saw and the glaciers we
5:23
saw most striking, just
5:25
because saw most the same time
5:27
we were over at the same
5:29
time we were over iceberg had
5:31
just come on South Georgia
5:33
and broken up into
5:35
fragments. up So we saw
5:37
quite a dramatic. a dramatic thing
5:40
that showed that the world was
5:43
showed that the world was changing rapidly.
5:45
wasn't actually actually meant to
5:48
be on the island. Yeah, so I
5:50
so I took my
5:52
inspiration from that. So you
5:54
just went with what you
5:56
were, unfolding around you? you?
5:58
it, it, was your sound? Does an iceberg
6:01
breaking up make a sound? Yeah, icebergs
6:03
breaking up do make sounds. So they
6:05
have air bubbles inside of them and
6:07
so you can hear they're crackling as
6:10
they get, their air bubbles get exposed
6:12
to the current climate. What medium are
6:14
you painting? Is it oil? What's your...
6:16
I use acrylics, so open golden acrylics.
6:19
Beautiful. And they're on, and how many
6:21
pieces have you got a piece that's
6:23
on display at the Maritime Museum? I
6:25
have four pieces and then two ceramics
6:27
works. So four paintings and two ceramics
6:30
works. Wonderful. And bird nude over here.
6:32
I would imagine that you've done a
6:34
bird. Yes, I've done four birds. Four
6:36
birds and then a ship named after
6:39
a bird. So I decided to go
6:41
with water colour. It's a medium that
6:43
I've used for a while now in,
6:45
you know, telling conservation stories through art
6:48
is something I really love to do,
6:50
which is why I jumped at the
6:52
opportunity to be able to tell this
6:54
quite special and unique conservation story. And
6:57
so I ended up painting some penguins
6:59
and a giant petrel and then a
7:01
very special little bird called a South
7:03
Georgia pintail which I'm sure nobody has
7:06
heard of before unless you're a crazy
7:08
bird nerd like me and they have
7:10
a very, they're special because they're endemic
7:12
to South Georgia Island. They're a little
7:15
duck. So we've never seen it. No,
7:17
no, no, I doubt there's many people,
7:19
other people I know that have seen
7:21
a South Georgia pintail. And what's really
7:24
special about them is that, so my
7:26
background in, you know, and predator and
7:28
pest control on islands and stuff like
7:30
that, South Georgia Island eradicated rats in
7:33
2018, and if they hadn't done it
7:35
then, the amount of ice that has
7:37
retreated on the island and melted away
7:39
with glacial retreat and that kind of
7:42
thing. meant that rats would have been
7:44
able to run rampant way further over
7:46
the island and would have killed off
7:48
to extinction two pieces of birds, the
7:51
South Georgia Pintel and South Georgia pivot.
7:53
And so what I really loved about
7:55
these ducks is that ear in Antarctica
7:57
and there's penguins and seals and stuff
8:00
and then out of nowhere there are
8:02
ducks and these ducks because the the
8:04
vegetation on the island is so limited
8:06
and the invertebrates are so limited these
8:09
ducks eat penguins they penguin scraps and
8:11
so we were walking around on our
8:13
first on our first landing on the
8:15
island roses being chased by penguin I'm
8:18
chasing some ducks and I see these
8:20
ducks dabbling around in a creek and
8:22
I think oh aren't they just delightful
8:24
and then suddenly they start pulling off
8:27
little scraps of the just delightful and
8:29
then suddenly they start pulling off little
8:31
scraps of penguin flesh off the bones
8:33
and things like that and I just
8:36
thought I mean they're going to sound
8:38
really boring but they just look that
8:40
they're brown but they have a bright
8:42
yellow beak which which has and a
8:45
really long pointy tail that comes out
8:47
to a little pinpoint at the end
8:49
which was quite fun to illustrate but
8:51
I did a lot of I took
8:54
a lot of pictures when I was
8:56
there and then I did all of
8:58
my painting when I was on the
9:00
ship as to pass the time because
9:03
we would as we moved around the
9:05
island we would stop and stop in
9:07
different places in the morning and in
9:09
the afternoon and in the meantime you
9:12
kind of every now and then you
9:14
might put your head down for a
9:16
nap or you'd eat something or you'd
9:18
just sit and stare out the window
9:21
at the glaciers and stuff but this
9:23
being able to paint some of the
9:25
pictures that I'd taken and some of
9:27
the things that I'd seen during the
9:30
day was kind of how I found
9:32
myself free winding when I was there.
9:34
In Charlie's just flipping through, is it
9:36
an artist flipbook with some beautiful images
9:39
that you have created? Rose, what's it
9:41
like to have your art work on
9:43
display? I think it's pretty awesome, especially
9:45
because I've just graduated art school, like
9:48
not many people actually give you that
9:50
chance straight away, especially at the Maritime
9:52
Museum. They've been so lovely and it's
9:54
such a big to have our art.
9:57
It's pretty special. Awesome. And what about
9:59
you Charlie? Yeah, I think being self-taught
10:01
and all because I don't think we
10:03
mentioned that. You haven't had like a,
10:06
you haven't been to university or anything,
10:08
you've just learnt yourself in pretty clever.
10:10
I've had some amazing mentors in my
10:12
life though, from spending a lot of
10:15
my childhood out on Altair Great Barrier
10:17
Island. I had a wonderful woman called
10:19
Karen who taught me how to paint
10:21
with acrylics when I was very little,
10:24
and just recently when I went to
10:26
visit we got to paint a painting
10:28
together, which was nice. So I've had
10:30
mentors that have helped me through the
10:33
years. So it's been really special to
10:35
be able to share with people like
10:37
them now, like look at what we're
10:39
able to do. And I think in
10:42
particular for our exhibition, it's that it's
10:44
not just art. It's this wonderful amalgamation
10:46
of art and education and science, which
10:48
we might not have had the opportunity
10:51
to do otherwise, which is why it's
10:53
been so special to do it with
10:55
the New Zealand Maritime Museum because they
10:57
saw our vision of what we wanted
11:00
to communicate and they took it and
11:02
ran with it and have added all
11:04
these amazing little. flip tiles on the
11:06
wall that talk about things about Antarctica
11:08
and we've got another artist parlor who's
11:11
come over with an exhibition from Italy
11:13
all about Shackleton and his his endurance
11:15
expedition and some of the other ones
11:17
and yeah it's just unbelievably special and
11:20
definitely not something I'd be I thought
11:22
we'd be doing at this at this
11:24
age and I think when we first
11:26
started planning it's not something that we
11:29
ever envisioned happening. Amazing, and if you
11:31
want to go and see this exhibition,
11:33
not expedition, exhibition of the display, it's
11:35
at the Auckland Maritime Museum, and I've
11:38
been speaking with artists Charlie Thomas and
11:40
Rose Lashham, and before you go, do
11:42
you have a Spotify rap? I
11:45
do. My Spotify, my Spotify rat this year was, I
11:47
had Park Road, amazing New Zealand band, top of my,
11:49
top of my Spotify this year. You win. I work
11:52
with kids, so unfortunately my playlist is ruined. is
11:54
is it? you going to
11:56
want to share it? A lot
11:58
lot of people are in
12:00
your situation I've got to
12:02
say. got lot of lot of bye bye
12:05
which I that song but their kids
12:07
kids love that song so
12:09
I'm just that on repeat. That's iconic,
12:11
that's better than mine. than mine.
12:13
Yeah. Ten our quarter I thank you
12:15
for joining us this morning.
Podchaser is the ultimate destination for podcast data, search, and discovery. Learn More