Space Waste Residency

A one-month sculpture residency at Greywood Arts in partnership with the National Space Centre and supported by Cork County Council. 

We are seeking expressions of interest from artists with a sculpture, three-dimensional or multi-disciplinary practice who are interested in examining questions arising around the waste produced by the acceleration of technology. It is an opportunity for an artist to explore the impact of human interactions with space and how we could move forward into the future. What are the implications of sending satellites and other hardware into space? Whose responsibility is it to regulate this and to manage space debris? 

The residency is an exciting invitation for an artist to reimagine and re-purpose technological space components that cannot be recycled. The artist will collect materials from the National Space Centre and observe the workings of a busy ground station before immersing themselves in the creative environment at Greywood. The project concludes with an exhibition and discussion at the National Space Centre in early December to showcase the work created during the residency and kick of the NSC’s 10th birthday celebrations. 

The National Space Centre is set to share space communications components including circuit boards, assemblies and data subframes with the artist, as well as preserved panels from their recently dismantled 11-metre EU-5B4 dish.

“This is a pivotal time in space exploration,” explained NSC CEO Rory Fitzpatrick. “We’re looking at manned Martian exploration in the near future, while Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have launched space tourism as a viable industry. At the same time, there are more than 125 million pieces of space garbage orbiting our planet. It’s an ideal moment to examine questions around our responsibility to live sustainably not only on Earth, but beyond it.”