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Stephen Eastaugh Travailogues - M.O.O.P ( Man out of Phase) 2002.

The TRAVAILOGUE series began in the year 2000 somewhere between Casey station in East Antarctica and Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The primitive hand stitching that I use in some works is done to enhance the texture of the little paintings but also I like the idea of stitching a slow laborious line across the fabric to represent a complicated journey. Paul Klee stated once that drawing is taking a line for a walk. I try to take my line on a very long and tricky tour. The stitching is a way to mirror in a tiny way the slow manner of walking on ice. Of travel in general in fact. Plugging in and out of soft snow or biting ice with crampons. The lines are domestic or private cartographic meanderings.

I use assorted types of bandage material as a support for all these works. This fabric to me with its function of helping to repair the body hints at the travail of travel. I am also fond of the texture that this material offers a painter. The medical bandage reeks of travail while my imagery depicts aspects of my meandering and habitual travels. Hopes of healing damage are also wrapt up in this fabric.

Many people see art itself as a mild form of medicine but the salve of art has not removed this perpetual bout of travel sickness that has made me geographically promiscuous and climatically challenged. I now confuse the exotic with the domestic and get far too much enjoyment from packing my bags and saying farewell...

Stephen Eastaugh, Artist with the Australian Antarctic Division, Casey, one month resupply voyage (2000), Davis, 4 months incl. Platcha hut, Brookes hut and Bandits hut (2002/03), QUARK polar tourist expedition ships. Artist in residence on 6 voyages ( x 5 to Antarctic peninsula, x1 to Ross sea ). www.stepheneastaugh.com.au

Eastaugh established an Antarctic sculpture garden at Davis in the summer of 2002-2003 , inspired by the presence there of a totem figure of a man carved roughly in wood. According to Jeremy Smith, Station Leader at Davis in 2003, the totem was made by Hans, a plumber who wintered there in 1977, who titled it "Man sculpted by Antarctica". It was described by Bernie Kit as "...a tribute to patience, winterers, sentinels, waiters, watchers and direction pointers. It's not ALL rocks, ice and machinery, Fred is there too, just because..."(Aurora, September 2003; 19)