Street art with the right stuff
As the highlight of a unique crossover project between ‘street art’ and space exploration, the winner of the Graffiti Without Gravity street art competition was announced by ESA this week.
In May, ESA teamed up with The Hague Street Art in the Netherlands to invite top street artists from across Europe to create their masterpieces in a competition using space exploration as inspiration for their works.
Two ‘wild card’ entries were selected from a public competition, allowing aspiring street artists to join the challenge along side some of the big names in the European street art scene. On 18 May, these street artists battled it out with spray paint and 12 empty canvases at Space Expo in Noordwijk.
As well as gaining a convincing score in a public vote, one of those wild card entries, Shane Sutton, from Dublin, Ireland, managed to impress a panel of judges consisting of experts from the space industry and the street art scene. Shane can now look forward to a very special prize: the chance to experience ‘zero gravity’ on a special parabolic flight next year.
Shane will get the chance to create some more street art on board the Novepsace zero-G aircraft, based at Bordeaux, France, which makes three-hour ‘rollercoaster’ flights usually used by ESA to conduct experiments and test equipment to be flown in space.
Massimo Sabbatini, Head of ESA’s ESTEC Erasmus Innovation Centre and co-organiser of the project with The Hague Street Art, said: “We believe it is important to seek new ways to create awareness for space exploration: it was encouraging to see how, this time, young urban artist communities reacted so positively to our call. And many of them are true space fans!
“The Hague Street Art created a great mix of well-known artists and newcomers, and what an achievement for the wildcard to win. We shall exhibit all artworks for a year, after which they will either be sold or given back to the artists. We believe that creative projects such as this are a unique source of inspiration for young generations because people can 'tune in' to this kind of art and music more easily.”
You can see all the entries of the Graffiti Without Gravity competition here on ESA's Flickr channel.
