Two Terra Nova crew members enjoying leisure time on the ice; British Antarctic Expedition 1910, pencil on paper, stop motion animation, dimensions variable

This work draws on imagery from English photographer Herbert Ponting’s film Great White Silence (1924) a documentary of the 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition led by Robert Falcon Scott. Ponting’s film is a composite of short sequences stitched together with narrative intertitles presenting a sophisticated and layered representation of an expedition to Antarctica. Throughout the film viewers see many living creatures native to the region, from sea birds to seals, and even the fins of killer whales circling near the ice. We also see the various visitors; the ship’s crew of dogs, ponies, men and a single black cat.

In two sequences the film shows evidence of the bond between the cat and one of the men. They are seen in an intimate moment of play, the cat nestled in the man’s arms. As he goes to stroke her head she catches hold of his arm and hand. In another scene the cat sits at the man’s feet, and as he reaches up making a circle with his arms, she jumps upwards through the ‘hoop’ and lands sure-footed on the ice. While there are many spectacular and fascinating scenes in the film, this one stands out for me because of its joy and intimacy. There is a clear bond of trust between the man and the cat. I chose to re-draw a handful of frames, slowly, in pencil. Each frame represents a couple of hours of work, to create a sequence that is 15 seconds long, drawn on scraps of paper discarded by another artist. The work is an act of devotion and a collection of fragments.

I am is fascinated by the sequence because of all the complexity and contradiction held in the space of a few seconds of grainy footage. These two are interlopers in an uninhabitable environment. Their presence is contingent on the structures of colonial expansion that support them. Reading between the lines there is so much we can extrapolate, about colonisation, about the choice to go to places that are not our ‘natural’ habitats, about the agency of the other sentient beings that humans co-opt to serve their agendas.

This work draws on imagery from English photographer Herbert Ponting’s film Great White Silence (1924). Ponting’s film documents the 1910-13 Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica led by Robert Falcon Scott. In one scene a black cat sits at a man’s feet, and as he reaches up making a circle with his arms, she jumps upwards through the ‘hoop’ and lands sure-footed on the ice. While there are many spectacular and fascinating scenes in the film, this one stands out for Hutch for its joy and intimacy. There is a clear bond of trust between the man and the cat. Hutch has re-drawn a handful of frames, slowly, in pencil. Each frame represents a couple of hours of work, to create a 15 second long sequence, drawn on scraps of paper discarded by another artist. The work is an act of devotion and a collection of fragments. I resist over-explaining, laying all this out, because I want to stay with the moment of joy — of play — between these two individuals.

Exhibited in More than human: The animal in the age of the Anthropocene, curated by Dr Natasha Fijn and Julian Laffan, ANU School of Art and Design Gallery 2020