CAMBRIDGE.- Striking paintings by Sir Sidney Nolan are being shown at a new exhibition in Cambridge. The special exhibition at the Polar Museum at the Scott Polar Research Institute runs from 30 September to 18 December 2010.

Only a few of Nolan’s Antarctic works remain in Britain. They are part of a series painted in 1964 after Nolan visited the Antarctic as a guest of the US Navy during Operation ‘Deep Freeze’. The majority of the series is held in museums and galleries worldwide.

With the support of the Sidney Nolan Trust and the Australian High Commission, the Polar Museum is delighted to present a selection from the small number of Nolan's Antarctic works which remain in Britain.

At the Adelaide festival in 1962, Nolan's friend Alan Moorehead, the Australian journalist and author, suggested a trip to the Antarctic. Moorehead, a freelance journalist for The New Yorker, then arranged for them to tour the US Naval and scientific bases in Antarctica. The visit became the inspiration for a major series of 68 paintings which Nolan completed in his studio in London. These vivid landscapes and portraits of the scientists and staff he encountered on the bases have never been shown in Cambridge before.

Sir Sidney Nolan (1917-1992) is Australia's most significant and internationally acclaimed artist. Born in Melbourne, he left school at 14 and, although he enrolled at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School, was largely self taught. In the 1940s, he was a member of the avant-garde group, the Angry Penguins. In 1951 he moved to London, where he set up a studio in Putney.