Aaron Butt

A painterly exploration of  Australian photographer Frank Hurley's images of the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition of 1914-1917. The body of work seeks to critique the colonial and patriarchal goals of the expedition and its negative effects on the environment. Frank Hurley captured hundreds of images of the expedition, many of which reside in the State Library of New South Wales collection. Many of the images were taken using a new method of colour photography called the 'Paget' process. Due to a range of factors, many of the photographs now have unintentional and non-indexical colourations, which inspired Butt to play with various painting techniques, pigments and different substrates.