Topic: Life-size Wooden Spacecraft Sculptures

[sam]

If you think about it, spacecraft are kind of ethereal in that once they are launched into space, we don't ever see them again. Australian artist Peter Hennessey has created life-size wooden sculptures of several different spacecraft, giving people the chance to see and touch these objects that are immediately recognizable but which we will never actually experience. Hennessey says he wanted to "reverse the virtualization of physical things" by creating life-size reproductions of the spacecraft such as the Voyager space probe, Apollo Lunar Rover, the Hubble Space Telescope, and more. From Hennessey's website: "By 're-enacting' space traveling, scientific and military objects in plywood, galvanized steel and canvas, the artist creates 'stand-ins' that allow the viewer to contemplate their physical, symbolic and historical resonances as well as the political processes that they represent."

http://www.universetoday.com/2010/06/10/life-size-wooden-spacecraft-sculptures/

[GillE]

It makes me wonder what the difference is between an artist and a craftworker.  I don't see that as being art.

[Clive]

What an excellent idea Sam.   

[Simon]

You'd need a bigger shed to create some of those, Gill. 

[GillE]

I wouldn't want to make them.  They're a grotesque misuse of wood.

He could have replicated them out of aluminium, steel, crisp packets, concrete... almost anything.  The material he has chosen is beautifully organic in its own right and its use is not sympathetic.  I despise that sort of 'art'.










Haven't I done well, keeping my disdain in check and not letting anyone see the true depth of my contempt ?

[sam]

I quite like them.

[Simon]

They must have taken a lot of work.