Art and the Antarctic

At the beginning of last year, John Kelly spent three months on the South Orkney Islands as part of the British Antarctic Survey's Artists And Writers Programme. With detailed sketches of the wildlife, he has attempted to convey something of what it was like to live in this extreme environment.

Annotated with diary entries, his sketch pad forms a visual diary of his daily routine, while a display of the equipment that enabled him to work in short, intense spurts attempts to give some insight into the difficulties encountered in such a hostile climate.

Completing the picture are a recreation of Kelly's small wooden hut and display cabinets containing bone fragments and feathers picked up along the coast, as well as paintings, photographs and sound recordings testifying to a turbulent four-day voyage from the Falkland Islands to the South Orkneys across the Southern Ocean.

But this all amounts to less of an imaginative response to the experience than a dry documentary account of them. An engaging exploration might have found less to say about the particular and more about the universal. It doesn't help that the work is scattered around three parts of the museum, making the displays difficult to find.

Until Aug 1, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road SW7, Mon to Sat 10am to 5.50pm, Sun 11am to 5.50pm, free. Tel: 020 7942 5000. Tube: South Kensington