These photographs were made on a voyage to Antarctica in February/March 2019 on the last ship before the onset of winter. They were recently shown at the Architectural Association’s ‘Architecture in the Extreme’ - a debate on the paradoxes by which, in Antarctica, permanence is embodied by fragile prefabricated wooden structures that stand as testament of pioneering imperialistic explorations and covert military operations, or, what Lydiat describes as ‘the presence of absence’.

During research for her PhD Lydiat explored the representation of women in the maritime with a particular emphasis on polar exploration. As an acknowledgement of the importance of her artistic research she was made a Postgraduate Fellow at the Royal Geographic Society (with IBG) (2018) and awarded a Library Research Fellowship to study the American Geographical Society’s Archive of Louise Arner Boyd photographs, University of Milwaukee, USA (2018). She recently presented her photographic research at the ‘Art and the Sea’ Conference at the Liverpool John Moores University and in the online Conference ‘Darkrooms and Representations: Histories of Photography, Film and Exploration’, National Maritime Museum, London (2020).