Creative Writing on Creative Antarctica

“You stand there so nice in your blizzard of ice, oh please let me come into the storm” – Leonard Cohen, One of Us Cannot Be Wrong, 1966

Antarctica is a place of intrigue—a remote, unknown, isolated and unforgiving continent that inspires creativity. An immense expanse of white stretching relentlessly to the horizon, void of permanent human settlement—it provides a tabula rasa primed for tales of wilderness and adventure, as well as stories of survival and human endurance pushed beyond limits. It is also a place where the climate crisis is starkly visible, and the future is envisioned as bleak and unliveable.

Antarctica offers the perfect setting for a compelling creative narrative. A landscape of extremes, it is shrouded in perpetual darkness in winter and bathed in continuous light throughout summer. It’s pristine white, thick packed-ice impenetrable and yet extremely fragile; under threat, on the verge of dissolving.

In partnership with the School of Media and Communication, RMIT Galleries invited Melody Ellis to curate a selection of four writers to engage with Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South. Eloise Grills, Dior Sutherland, Gareth Morgan and Alice King will work on their responses to the exhibition throughout March and April. Please join us on Friday 1 May at 2pm in the ‘Ice Salon’ reading room when they will read excerpts from their creative writing outcomes.

This event is presented by RMIT Galleries for RMIT University, as part of the exhibition Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South.

Image credit: Installation view of the ‘Ice Salon’ reading room, featuring Antarctica in Fiction by Elizabeth Leane as part of Creative Antarctica: Australian Artists and Writers in the Far South, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2026. Photo courtesy of RMIT Galleries.

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